The Omega Factor

by Jack Gerson

  Beyond the arch was a small cobbled square, gutters clogged with refuse. At their right, the rear of a more modern building towered above them, some kind of factory or warehouse belonging at least to the earlier part of this century. Two steps led to a door which was locked with an ancient padlock and cracked windows on each side of the door were covered from the inside with wooden boards and pieces of dirty cardboard. The building was obviously long abandoned.

  To their left were three shop fronts. Two of them were boarded up and the third, although its plate glass window was still intact, was equally deserted, the window encrusted with the dust and dirt of several years.

  'Not exactly a hive of industry,' Anne mused.

  'You're right,' Crane replied. 'But it does seem vaguely familiar. Smaller somehow than I saw it but familiar.'

  Anne shot him a questioning look.

  'Anne, despite what I say, I've never been here in my life before,' he added.

  Stopping he nudged with a foot a rusty tin in the gutter. Anne wandered across to the remaining shop window. The door of the shop was again boarded up and the boarding was also defaced with graffiti. Crane looked after her. He felt defeated.

  'No Cochrane's. No "eye".'

  Anne was peering into the window. 'Tom, come over here!'

  He joined her. Patches of grime obscured part of the glass but in other parts it was possible to see dimly into the window.

  'Tom, look there, in the corner of the window!' Anne was barely able to contain the excitement in her voice. 'That's it. Your "eye"!'

  Crane pressed against the glass and saw it. Askew, in one corner of the interior of the window cobwebs, running across it, he could make out the drawing of an eye. Above the eye part of the sign were the words, 'H. B. Menzies-Optician'.

  They looked at each other and Anne's excitement was communicated to Crane.

  'It could be coincidence,' she said quietly but he knew she didn't believe it.

  'We've got Fellgate and the "eye"! It's not coincidence!' he insisted.

  'But no Cochrane. Menzies is printed above the eye.'

  Crane looked around. 'They weren't together.' He walked to the other shops, looking for a name or some sign of a name. More graffiti. Had kids in Edinburgh nothing better to do but write on walls?

  Yet now the feeling of defeat had gone. There was Fell-gate and there was the 'eye'. There had to be the name now and the name, he knew, would lead him closer to... what? He couldn't answer. He knew but he daren't admit it to himself.

  He turned and crossed the cobbles to the door of the derelict factory. Anne watched him intently, now caught up in his certainty that he would find what he was looking for.

  He studied the door, eyes searching for even a piece of graffiti that would confirm his certainty. When he had scanned every inch of the door, he turned to the walls on either side. Nothing to the right. Two paces to the left and his eyes met a square of board sticking to the wall. He rubbed the dust from it with his bare hand. It was blank, a square piece of wood nailed to the wall for no apparent reason.

  Nailed to the wall. But not to the stone; it was nailed over another square of wood. He tugged the square of wood but the nail was embedded deeply in the wood underneath. The effort of tugging left his right hand trembling. Yet he knew at once it wasn't the exertion of trying to pull the wood away. Something else. Something from within him, an excitement and a knowledge that he was close.

  With both hands he heaved at the square of wood. Anne was behind him now, an expression of surprise on her face at the energy he was expending. Then, with a cracking sound the nail came out of the wood, a puff of rust and dry wood coming with it. The square of wood fell at Crane's feet and he found himself facing what had once been a company sign board.

  Crane was staring at the lettering 'and Co., Ltd.' The rest of the sign was covered in a greenish fungus and clotted with dirt. With the palm of his hand he rubbed across the surface of the sign and found himself staring at the full name-plate.

  'COCHRANE AND CO., LTD.'

  He turned and looked at Anne, his face triumphant.

  She smiled. 'You were right.'

  'I... I knew it. I don't know how I knew it, but I did.'

  'Tom, what now?' she questioned. 'What does it mean?'

  He took a pace to his right and stared at the door. Then he reached out and grasped the padlock on the door. It fell open in his hands.

  'It's all right,' he grinned at Anne. I didn't make it open. It wasn't locked. Anybody could get in here.'

  He pulled at the double doors and one of them creaked open. Inside he could see a dim hall and at one side a cubicle. Beside it was a wall board with slots for time-cards.

  'That's where the workers checked in,' he muttered almost to himself. 'And the caretaker sat in the cubicle.'

  'It's not unusual,' said Anne from behind him but he didn't hear her; because suddenly he was so sure he knew exactly what he must do. Lifting his foot he kicked the other door open and walked into the hall.

  'Wait, Tom!' Anne exclaimed, suddenly alarmed at his determination. 'What are you doing?'

  Her words reached him. 'It's called breaking and entering.'

  He stood for a moment and then turned to his left.

  'There should be a staircase,' he explained, more to himself than to Anne who followed him in nervously.

  Then, in the dim light coming from above, he saw the staircase. He felt no surprise. Everything was where it should be.

  'Listen, Tom, we can't...' Anne started to speak but he cut her off abruptly.

  'Damn it, it's all right. I don't understand but I know it's all right. I swear I've never been here in this building in my life before but I know exactly where we've got to go!'

  He looked round at Anne, hesitant, in the centre of the hall.

  'Come on! We have to go upstairs...' For a moment he faltered, a sudden stab of uncertainty. 'It has to be upstairs!' he exclaimed, thrusting any doubts aside.

  Turning he moved quickly up the stairway. Frowning, worried, Anne followed.

  The building was four storeys high and light filtered down the stairwell from a cracked and dirty frosted-glass skylight. Crane reached the first floor and ignoring various doors which led off the landing he continued to climb the stairs. He was running now and behind him Anne stumbled, barking her shin on one of the steps.

  Crane arrived at the second floor landing and stopped. A corridor ran off to his left and two doors faced him, one of them open, the hinges creaking as it moved with a breeze from a broken window. Ignoring these doors he started to move again as Anne climbed the last step and drew level with him.

  'Along there,' he said, breathing heavily and nodding towards the corridor.

  Some twenty yards down the corridor he stopped again facing a heavy steel fire door. Anne arrived behind him. He glanced round at her.

  'She's in here,' he said, and she noticed his hand trembled as he reached out and pushed against the stained metal of the door. I know she's in behind the door.'

  He repeated the sentence, almost as if to reassure himself. Anne tried to push the door with no result. Then she noticed the keyhole.

  'I think it's locked.'

  Crane nodded. He felt very sure of himself now.

  'It's locked. From the inside. The key will still be in the lock.'

  He stepped back, motioning Anne to stand clear. Then he lifted his foot and kicked, almost viciously just above the keyhole. The door gave a clanging metallic groan but did not open. Stepping back again, Crane kicked out once more, the force of the kick jarring his entire body. The door shuddered and seemed imperceptibly to move.

  Crane kicked out again and again, the kicks becoming almost frenzied. The door creaked and groaned and finally, with a sound of snapping metal, swung open.

  The room was completely square, about ten feet by ten. Apart from a few scraps of paper and shards of wood amid the dust on the floor it was devoid of anything. Anything, that is, except one thing. And that,
as Crane stepped in, followed by Anne, he could not at first see.

  A frosted window at the rear of the room was cracked and broken and through the hole Crane could see roof tops of adjacent buildings. He looked around, and for a moment, the feeling of certainty deserted him. He could see nothing but bare walls, cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper. He swivelled around staring at the corner by the window. Nothing but bare boards.

  When they had entered the room, Crane had pushed the steel door and it had slid as far back as rusty metal hinges would allow. It was Anne who reached out to pull the door back.

  As she did so, Crane took a deep breath and almost choked. Under the odour of dampness and decay there was another smell; sickly, pungent and unspeakable.

  'God! That smell, Anne..?'

  She had drawn a deep breath and had been assailed by it too. She had known that smell often before; in anatomy labs, in hospital mortuaries, from her student days onwards.

  Holding her breath, she pulled back the door with some idea of making sure the key was in the lock on the inside.' If it was, then Crane was right and someone had been in the room; and that someone had not left by the door.

  The key was in the lock on the inside. And there was something else behind the door.

  'Tom!' Anne gasped and the tone of her voice caused him to turn, walk over towards her and wrench the metal door back, away from the wall.

  He knew what he was going to see before he saw it.

  The body of the woman lay, half upright against the wall behind the door. She had obviously settled herself in a sitting position, back against the wall, legs straight out in front of her. Having settled there she had taken a small razor blade, one of those blades that fits a mini-razor, the kind used by women, and at first had attempted to cut her own throat. The wound ran for three inches under the chin and, though deep, was not deep enough to have killed her.

  Crane thought, as he stood staring down, how difficult it must be to cut one's own throat. She had obviously given up the attempt, although a great deal of blood had soaked the front of her dress. It had hardened into an ugly dark brown colour, clotting the dress down to her waist.

  When she had discovered she could not cut her throat she had taken the razor, sliced deeply into both wrists, laid her arms on either side of her semi-recumbent body, leant her head back, closed her eyes and bled to death. The razor still lay between the fingers of her right hand, rusted with blood.

  Anne had turned away. She had seen death often but not in this guise.

  Crane stood motionless for some time, visualising what had happened. And then as he was about to move he found his eyes mist over and blur. The whiteness swam in, obscuring the sight of the dead woman, taking over his range of vision. Then across the whiteness again there was the long slash of red blood, not the brown dried blood of the woman who had lain in that locked room for over a week, but a stain that was red and still liquid in his sight.

  He was aware that he must have swayed and staggered. He felt Anne's hands steadying him and the whiteness dissolved into the true vision of what was in front of him.

  'Are you all right?' Anne asked anxiously.

  'I'm all right.'

  He still stood staring at the body. Should he have felt satisfaction at being proved right, he asked himself. But there was no satisfaction here. He felt only sorrow.

  He had found Margaret Christie and he would have wished he had not.

  A few minutes later they climbed down the stairs and it was Anne who went away to telephone the police while Crane stood in Fellgate Close gulping fresh air. Even the murk of city air was fresh compared to the dead air of the square room where the body lay.

  The police arrived, first two uniformed men in a car and then others in plain clothes, one carrying a camera and another with a large leather bag. After a time a police ambulance arrived and while a stretcher was taken into the building a young plain clothes officer showed them to a car and took them to the police station. There they waited in another square room with green walls until they were shown into the office of a tall thin man who looked like a bank manager. He introduced himself as Detective Superintendent Wallace and proceeded to ask them questions.

  'What were you doing in a disused factory?'

  'Did you know the body was there?'

  'How did you know the body was there?'

  'Were you acquainted with the dead woman?'

  Crane tried to explain. As he did so he wondered to himself, how could he explain the inexplicable. He tried. He talked of psychic perception, of knowing the woman was there because he had seen the name, 'Fellgate', because he had sat in his brother's flat and visualised the room in the factory.

  Wallace listened with what seemed to Crane surprising politeness and patience. When Crane had finished Wallace had nodded, muttered something about having read of such psychic perception but never before coming across it. Crane could feel the scepticism within the man despite his polite forbearance.

  Finally he had asked to speak to Dr Reynolds alone and Crane returned to the square green room leaving Anne facing Wallace on her own.

  An hour later Anne came out of Wallace's office, a smug smile on her face.

  'Come on, Tom,' she said. Behind her, Wallace nodded to a plain clothes man who had been sitting with Crane.

  Crane followed Anne out of the police station, puzzled by her attitude and their quick release.

  'How did you manage that?' he inquired as they walked towards his car.

  Anne's smile became mischievous. 'I used to play poker at University. I'm a good bluffer.'

  'It would take more than bluff to persuade that Superintendent to let me go.'

  Anne stopped beside his car and looked up at him. 'Look, they had nothing to hold you on. The woman had locked herself in that room and committed suicide. You weren't even in Edinburgh when she did it.'

  Crane frowned. 'How did I know where to find the body? That would have been enough to hold me. And he didn't look like the kind of character to believe I'd... well, I'd "seen" it.'

  Staring at him evenly Anne said, 'He said something to me about intervention by a higher authority. And he had a phone call while I was with him.'

  'From who? And who is the higher authority?'

  You'll find out in time, I should think. Or maybe it was an excuse for getting out of being bettered by a woman.'

  Crane scratched his head. 'Look, let's go and have a drink. And I promised I'd phone Alistair Crombie. He gave me all his paper's press cuttings and I said I'd let him know if I found anything.'

  Anne laughed. 'You certainly found something.'

  They waited for Alistair Crombie in the Abbotsford bar. On their arrival Anne bought Crane and herself two large whiskies before he could protest.

  'I don't just preach woman's lib, I buy my share of the drinks, as well,' she explained. But by this time any relief Crane had felt about being so easily released from the police station had dissipated. Again uncertainties were creeping into his mind.

  'I still can't take it in,' he said. I saw that place before we went there. I'd never been there before, and yet I did know the woman was there.'

  The smile went from Anne's face. 'Has anything like this ever happened to you before?'

  Crane stared at her across the bar table and then he looked down. A carafe of murky water in the centre of the table seemed suddenly wrong, larger than it should be, out of place. The glass of the carafe had been cut into a number of surfaces angled against each other, facets that caught the light from the high windows of the bar and threw the light back into his eyes.

  Anne repeated her question. 'Has anything like this ever happened..?'

  Or did she repeat it? Or was it an echo in his head; one that he knew he did not want to hear? Somewhere at the back of his mind there was something, a memory trace, an image that he did not want to bring to the surface. He looked away from the carafe, upwards to the ceiling of the bar. A crack ran across the dirty grey plaster out from one cor
ner of the cornice. He stared and blinked. The moment of deja-vu; the feeling, no, more than the feeling, the knowledge that he had been here before. He blinked again and for a second his eyes misted. Then the mist was clearing and there was only the ceiling and there was no crack on the ceiling at all, just a perfect grey-white smoothness.

  He looked at Anne, waiting for an answer. He did not know the answer or he did not want to know it.

  'Well, well, well, here we are then.' Although the voice was not loud it seemed to boom out at him. But it was opportune. He did not have to answer Anne.

  Alistair Crombie squeezed his not immoderate bulk down on the other side of Anne. Crane introduced him quickly, relieved at the journalist's arrival. Shaking hands, Crombie made an ineffectual movement to rise, seemed to abandon the effort and subsided back into the worn leather of the bar alcove.

  Crane rose, bought three large whiskies and returned. Crombie was chatting to Anne easily as if she was an old friend. Crane envied his ability to do this, was sure that it was one reason Crombie was successful as a reporter. And yet why should he feel envious? Crombie had expressed admiration at Crane's own success. Did we always envy our contemporaries as if the grass was genuinely greener in someone else's patch? Or was he again revealing to himself his own uncertainty?

  Crombie grinned across at him. 'I've told them at the editorial conference that we've got a big story coming for page one. I really hope you have something.'

  Crane nodded. 'I did promise I'd let you in first.'

  Across the table Anne took a gulp of whisky and looked at her watch. 'Look, Tom, I'm sorry but I really will have to go.'

  Crane frowned. 'Look, Anne, we won't be long...'

  'I know. But I have neglected my work.' She turned to Crombie who was awkwardly rising again to let her out. You will excuse me, Mr Crombie. Perhaps we'll meet again.'

  Crane felt a momentary stab of panic. He didn't want her to go; it was as if she had been an anchor all day, a rock of security; someone he could rely on when the uncertainties became too much.