by Joseph Knox
We were asked by the faceless woman to go and play. Annie went to the play-box with a sigh and overturned it. She stepped through the assortment of toys that spilled out, examining them like it was her day job. Her small, concentrating frown said she didn’t know or care if she was being watched.
I looked from her to the couple.
Saw them glowing.
Saw she was doing the right thing.
I went over a little too eagerly, then. Started playing with her in earnest, trying to look inseparable. When it was time to say goodbye I all but wrapped myself around my sister. I was excited and on edge for a few days afterwards, but the couple never came back.
Absent parents, I thought. Secrets and lies.
7
I was awake when the knock came. The rain had been coming down like heels on a cobbled street. I opened the door to Detective Kernick. He stared past me, over my shoulder, into the room. He took it in at a glance and turned round without even looking at me.
I followed him out to his car and made that same journey along Deansgate. It was still morning but Beetham Tower was hidden by a thick rain mist, temporarily repairing the city’s skyline. We rode the lift up to the forty-fifth floor but something felt different. Kernick escorted me along the corridor to Rossiter’s suite. He used his key card at the door and motioned me forward. He didn’t come inside.
Rossiter was sitting in an armchair. He left me standing there for a minute as he read through a sheet of paper on his lap, occasionally rubbing his right temple. When he reached the end of the document he lifted it between forefinger and thumb, checking the other side.
The clouds I’d seen from the ground were wrapped around the building and the room was gloomy, sparsely lit by an occasional lamp on the coffee table. From where I was I could see that the other side of the paper was blank. Rossiter replaced it on his lap and began reading it through for the second time.
‘I’ll come back later.’
‘Take a seat,’ he said, without looking up. I crossed the room and sat. Rossiter straightened his cufflinks as though he had to be somewhere else.
‘You’ve been a busy boy.’
I ignored him. ‘I’m afraid things may have escalated.’
‘The investigation?’
‘Your daughter.’
‘Oh?’
‘I explained Carver’s business model?’
‘All too briefly,’ he said, sounding bored. ‘Drugs in pubs and clubs, girls collecting the money.’
‘I think Isabelle may be collecting for him.’
‘You think.’
‘I know.’
‘You said you only know what you see. Did you see it or didn’t you?’
‘From a distance.’
‘Distance,’ he said, looking up at me for the first time. ‘Go on.’
‘There isn’t much else. The rest pertains to an ongoing serious crimes investigation that doesn’t involve her.’
‘And let me guess. The position she’s in now makes her vulnerable. So vulnerable that she shouldn’t be pulled out too suddenly.’
‘The opposite. She should be dragged out kicking and screaming. Now, today.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Whatever your problems with each other, there has to be somewhere else she can go. A friend or relative.’
‘Is that it?’
‘What else is there?’
‘I assumed you were saving the best part for last.’
‘Look, I’ve seen your daughter, Mr Rossiter. I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Come now, Waits. You’ve done a good deal more than just see her.’
I didn’t say anything.
There was a brown envelope on the table between us. Rossiter leaned forward and slid it across the glass in my direction. On it was written: I. R. 30th October.
‘Open it,’ he said.
I slid the envelope back at him. ‘Do it yourself.’
He exhaled through his nose. It was a theatrical frustration, the kind of rehearsed tic that debaters often pick up. He piled a disarming smile on top of it and tore the envelope.
Inside it were photographs.
He threw them across the table and they slid to a halt at my knee. They were full colour but blurred. Most likely from a camera phone. I could see the sheen of sweat on Isabelle’s skin.
They showed the two of us, together, at the first house party I’d been to. In the first I was holding her close in a crowded hallway. We were staring into each other’s eyes, bodies joined at the hip. The second shot showed me handing Isabelle a bottle. Another showed her drinking. Each subsequent picture showed us closer and closer together, until we were damningly knit.
Our lips almost touched.
Rossiter watched me, eyelids half-mast, gauging my reaction. When he finally spoke he sat back in his chair, as though he wanted to be as far away from me as possible.
‘Anything to declare?’
‘It’s—’
‘Not what it looks like? Spare me the shit, Waits.’ He searched his pockets and lit a cigarette. ‘So why don’t you start again. From the beginning. And this time, don’t leave out the juicy bits.’
I got up, walked to the door and opened it. Detective Kernick was still standing on the other side. I closed the door in his face. I stood there for a second, then walked back across the room towards Rossiter and sat down.
8
It was starting to go dark again when I left the penthouse. Between the morning mist and the early evening, it felt like there’d been no daylight at all. Detective Kernick was gone when I left, so I took the lift down alone and stood at the taxi rank on Deansgate. I gave the driver Isabelle’s address. A part of me believed the Franchise was better for her than home, but she wasn’t safe. There had to be another way.
The city was moonlit by the time I got there, and I wondered if I’d even find her in. The lobby to her building was unlocked and unguarded, and I walked the three flights up to her room without seeing anyone. Same disembodied voices behind closed doors, same buzzing halogen light bulbs.
I ran my hand over her door, feeling the grain of the wood, recalling the bitter night before. I realized it was slightly ajar and pushed it open.
I was hit by the stale smell of sex.
Isabelle was naked on the carpet, staring up at the doorway. Her eyes were open and there was a needle in her arm. Her white-blonde hair looked dull somehow.
She was very quiet, still and dead.
The whole left side of her body had turned a light shade of blue. In some places I could see the network of veins, intermingling, creating the effect. The arm with the needle in it was a darker shade, almost black around the injection site. I turned, kicked the door as hard as I could and then went to her.
‘Izzy …’
My hand hovered over her forehead for a second before I could touch it. The sweat on her skin was cold. Without thinking I stepped back out into the corridor and drew the door closed. My legs went weak and I slumped against the wall, trying to think.
I rubbed the sweat from her skin into my trousers.
People don’t die from overdoses. Bad needles, bad dealers, a lifetime on the streets, but hardly ever from overdoses. I needed to walk back inside and slap her. Call an ambulance and put her in the shower. But I just stood there. Time lapsed and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
I panicked, pushed off the wall into Isabelle’s door, pretending to call for her, hoping the person would pass. As the steps came closer I even rapped my knuckles against the wood, knocking lightly. There was a shadow in my periphery, the person coming down the corridor towards me. As the shape came closer, I fixed my eyes on the door. The person stopped and I turned.
‘Hi,’ said Catherine, surprised to see me. ‘She in?’
‘No answer,’ I said.
She mock-rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, Izzy, rise and shine.’ She banged twice on the door and gave me a small matter-of-fact smile when it opened slightly. I didn’t stop her when she walked by me
, into the flat. The sharp breath she took made it real. I followed her inside and closed the door behind us.
9
Catherine raised both hands to her mouth. She was so unconscious of me that I felt like a voyeur, like I was watching some private grief.
I crouched beside Isabelle and felt pointlessly for a pulse. The tips of my fingers were clammy, tingling with pins and needles, and I could barely feel anything through them. I replaced her wrist on the floor, lowering it gently as if I might still wake her. Isabelle was staring at me with what would be the last look on her face. It wasn’t the blissful daze you associate with heroin.
It was horror.
Her jaw was tensed, clamped shut, and the muscles in her face spasmed. When I ran a hand down over her eyelids I thought I felt a moment’s resistance, as though there was something still left of her. We didn’t move for a minute but Catherine cleared her throat like she was about to say something. Instead, she smoothed down her clothes and walked calmly into the bathroom, eyes raised away from the body. She closed the door behind her and started to retch.
I stood and let my eyes wander down Isabelle’s naked frame. I didn’t feel anything looking at her skin, the blue left-hand side of her body, but my eyes glazed over the old scar on her neck. She’d tried so hard to keep it covered up in life. Her ribs jutted out sharply, like the bars on a cage. Her nudity, her beauty, her youth, all combined to make some point that I felt like I was missing. Some final, wicked criticism against life.
No future.
Her left arm was such a dark shade of blue that I couldn’t see if there were other injection marks on it. There were none on her right, though. Her knees were together, leaning to one side. I thought I could see some kind of rash on her legs …
The toilet flushed and Catherine opened the door. Light mascara tears had run down her face and she walked out wiping her mouth with a towel. She was shaky on her feet, and leaned on the wall to steady herself. I thought she was in shock. She stopped when she saw me beside Isabelle.
‘What were you doing here?’ she said. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway that led back out into the hall. Hopelessly, I thought. I could see her mind working, wondering if I’d killed her friend, wondering if she could get to the door faster than I could get to her.
‘I brought her home last night. She asked me to come back today.’
Catherine nodded, not really believing me. ‘I have to go,’ she said, starting to walk.
I blocked her way.
‘What were you doing here?’
‘We were working tonight,’ she said. ‘Collecting.’
‘When did you speak to her last?’
‘Last night in Rubik’s.’ She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice. ‘When I asked you to tell her I’d gone.’
‘What was the argument you were having with the bar manager?’ She looked up in surprise. ‘I was watching you; you said “no more”. No more what?’
‘Who are you?’
‘No more what?’
‘No more drink, I expect. We’d had more than enough.’
‘Catherine.’
She shrugged. ‘He was trying it on with her.’
‘Had that happened before?’
‘I don’t know. Neil likes ’em young but it’s a fine line. Zain’d kill him if he found out.’
I thought of the barman. Of flushing the drugs, probably forcing him underground.
‘Tell me where she got the stuff.’
‘I don’t know, Zain doesn’t let us use …’
‘He’s a saint, that guy. Where did she get it?’
‘I don’t know.’
I started to take my phone from my pocket.
‘Not the police,’ she said. ‘We can deal with this ourselves.’
‘Girls like Isabelle Rossiter don’t just disappear.’
‘But she has, she’s already run away from home.’
I started to dial.
Catherine put her hand on my arm. ‘We could call anonymously, once we’re away from here …’
‘They’d find us. Believe me.’ I held on to her with one arm while the phone was answered. I told the operator that we’d found a teenage girl, dead, overdosed, and gave him the address. Fog Lane. When he asked additional questions I hung up. I knew that whatever I’d wanted to hold back from Parrs, from Rossiter, would have to come out now.
Catherine looked like she was going to be sick again. I went to the fridge, searching for the vodka I’d found the night before. The bottle was still there. I took three burning mouthfuls and handed it to her.
‘Have a drink.’
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘It’ll help.’
‘I can’t.’
I lowered my head to look her in the eyes.
‘Not now …’
‘What?’
She looked at me from very far away. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said quietly.
I felt a vein throbbing in my head. A sharp pain went through my collarbone and a dull one went through my fading black eye. I stayed very still, clenching my fists and waiting for it to pass.
‘What?’
‘I said—’
‘You’re sure?’
She looked at me. Rummaged in her bag and produced a pregnancy test. I took it from her. Held it up to the light. It was positive.
I handed it back without saying anything.
‘That first night at Fairview …’
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
‘What are you gonna do?’
‘Not what are we gonna do?’ she said. ‘Have it in prison, I suppose.’
I heard sirens down on the street. I thought of the questions they might ask her and the answers she might give them. A flash of hate went through me, at myself, at Catherine in that moment. I wished I’d never met any of them at all. She pulled away from me, walked around Isabelle’s body and sat down on the sofa.
‘No,’ I said, lifting her by the arm. ‘You have to go.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll leave you out of it, but you have to go.’
‘They’re here.’
I dragged her out of the room with me, along the corridor and towards the stairs. I looked down the three flights and saw two police officers on their way up. We went back up the corridor, past Isabelle’s flat, towards a fire escape.
I hit the bar.
The door opened on to a black back staircase. The fire alarm went off. A piercing, high-pitched sound. Catherine walked in and looked back at me. In the darkness of the doorway I couldn’t see her features. She was just the shape of a person.
She hesitated. ‘The bathroom, there’s something in the bathroom—’
‘Get to Carver,’ I said. ‘Tell him to make sure Fairview’s clean. The police’ll be searching.’ She squeezed my hand and disappeared down the stairs. I closed the door and strode back up the corridor. People had started to appear from their rooms, startled by the alarm. I went toward Isabelle’s.
I was standing outside, breathless, when the officers reached the top of the stairs. I moved smoothly back into the room, hoping I had a minute before they found me.
I only looked at Isabelle to step over her. Shaking, I threw myself round the flat. Wiped my prints off the bottle.
I thought of the phone.
The message she’d sent me:
Zain knows.
I went through her bag but it wasn’t there. I couldn’t see it anywhere. Cautiously, I went on, into the bathroom. The alarm was so loud in there that it felt like it was going off inside my head.
I started when I saw the mirror. It was fractured in the centre where someone had struck the glass. There had been a message written across it in thick, red lipstick before the blows.
NO ONE CAN EVER KNOW
I couldn’t move. It hadn’t been there the night before. Now Isabelle was dead. Her phone was missing. Someone had written a threat across her mirror. I didn’t hear the police come in. When they found me I wa
s still staring at that message. I could see myself reflected in a kaleidoscope of shattered glass, those words written across my face.
There was a uniformed officer at the door. He said something but I couldn’t make out the words over the alarm. I tried to read his lips but it frustrated me and I turned away.
NO ONE CAN EVER KNOW
I shouted. I wanted to be louder than the alarm, and I threw all of my weight at the mirror, hoping to smash the glass off the wall entirely. Make a scene and give Catherine time to get away. The officer came at me and I threw a wild fist at him. He got his hands around my wrists. The alarm was screaming in my ears. I struggled until his partner came in.
She looked me in the eyes and spoke slowly. At first I thought I knew her, but I just recognized the expression on her face.
Something like sympathy.
I stopped resisting and relaxed back into the male officer’s arms. The policewoman calmly raised her truncheon. She was still speaking slowly, as though explaining some harmless procedure. Then she brought the truncheon down, very precisely, on to my forehead. It snapped against my skull. My body went slack and a warm wave of relief went through me.
Then the second blow came and everything went black.
10
White noise. The glitch and crackle of a police radio.
Aidan.
Someone was saying my name but I didn’t want to own up to it. I felt my body being moved and wondered if this was what Isabelle had gone through. If she’d still been aware when we found her, and then slowly tuned in to a different frequency.
Static.
It cut through my head, eventually becoming the beautiful bubble and squeak of a radio searching for a station. I woke up in the off-white hysteria of the Royal Infirmary.
My head was killing me.
Superintendent Parrs was standing over the bed, grey-faced, red-eyed, and staring at the wall. His eyes moved down to mine when he saw that I was awake, then he said something over his shoulder and looked away again. The male police officer who’d restrained me was standing in the far corner of the room, hugging his body. Tissue protruded from both nostrils and I realized I must have caught him on the nose. He had a pained look on his face, like he could only keep his hands from reaching out to kill me by exerting superhuman inner strength.