Sirens

by Joseph Knox

  The voice stopped.

  A few seconds went by and I felt Sarah Jane’s eyes on mine. We looked at each other, neither daring to interrupt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carver.

  11

  Carver dropped the phone on the floor. Sarah Jane was walking towards him as I walked backwards, out of the room. Neither of them looked up as I left. The bright, violent light bulbs on the landing buzzed overhead and I tripped down the stairs, holding on to the bannister. I ran across the lobby and banged through the double doors, back into the street.

  The night was a flash of images.

  There was no sequence of events and afterwards I had no idea what order they came in. I remember it as being in twenty-five different places at once. I was on a main road, waving down cars. I was in a cab, I was back at Rubik’s. It was gone midnight. The doors were closed and I was talking to the people outside. Interrupting conversations, asking if they’d seen Cath. I was round the back, checking the fire exits.

  I was leaving the Locks, walking towards the city centre. The clubs were still going strong. Long, loud queues snaked outside most.

  Skin, laughter, perfume.

  I had watched Franchise girls collecting in these clubs and I was talking to the people queuing up outside. I was talking to the doormen.

  Don’t know her, mate.

  Don’t know him, mate.

  Don’t think so, mate.

  I was in a cab, on my way home. I was going through drawers, throwing things on the floor, looking for something.

  I found my warrant card.

  Took a handful of speed.

  Left.

  I was back in the city centre. I was going by the queues again, looking for Cath, Sheldon, Grip, the barman.

  Looking for anyone.

  I was in an alleyway, smoothing down my clothes, getting my breath back. I was rehearsing a smile. I lost track of which bars I had been by and did a second circuit. I was showing my warrant card to the doormen. I was watching them memorize my name.

  They let me in. That roar of bass, voices, laughter. I was trying to remember Cath’s favourite place in each. I was in the corners. I was shouting over the music. I was splitting up couples, trying to describe her. I was finding different street-side pubs and clubs as I went. It was around one in the morning and this time people looked at me differently. Their smiles were wary.

  I saw them wondering who I was.

  I was in the street. I was in a cab. I was outside Carver’s, banging on the door. I was in the city. I was watching the queues dwindle down to nothing. I was in the clubs again. A man with an earpiece was talking to me, shouting over the music.

  ‘Help you, mate?’

  I was showing him my warrant card.

  ‘I’m looking for a girl.’ He was nodding at the stools by the bar, where the music was a little quieter. We were sitting down, we were talking.

  ‘Same from earlier?’

  ‘Earlier?’

  ‘One of your lot was in here earlier. After a brunette in a leather jacket with two older men.’

  ‘What’d he look like?’

  ‘Didn’t see him, mate.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Pat. On break.’

  ‘Get him for me.’ I realized I was standing up.

  ‘I’ll see if I can find him.’ He was walking into the crowd and I was looking around. The DJ was ending his set with slow songs, and people everywhere danced, kissed, wrapped themselves up in each other. The air was alcohol and energy drinks. Perfume and sex.

  ‘You OK?’ said the barmaid.

  ‘Double vodka and Red Bull, thanks.’ She seemed confused for a second, and I realized that hadn’t been what she was asking. Then she turned and started making the drink. I was washing down some more speed when the doorman came back through the crowd with a colleague.

  ‘Someone was asking about a girl earlier. Tell me what he looked like.’

  He was confused, said something to his friend.

  ‘What did he look like?’ I repeated.

  ‘It was you, mate.’

  I was standing outside Fairview in the pure, perfect darkness. The street was so still I felt like I was indoors. On a soundstage in some impossibly large building. I was in the street, I was in a cab, I was in the city, I was inside the clubs, outside them.

  I was walking towards the Burnside. The cabbie wouldn’t go all the way. I was at the warehouse, outside it, inside it. I was talking to the junkies, shaking them awake, talking at them about a pretty girl with brown hair.

  12

  Weak, grey, English daylight. I had reached Fairview an hour before but decided to wait until 8 a.m. before I started knocking. Sometimes speed has that effect on me. Imparts an odd respectability. I walked around the block a few times. Listened to the morning birdsong.

  It had been raining lightly for the last couple of hours and my clothes were damp. I saw two girls walking to work, laughing, holding newspapers over their heads to keep dry. Their eyes scanned past me like I wasn’t there.

  I went with three medium knocks. I decided I’d wait a minute, then knock again. After another minute, I’d break a window in the back and let myself in. Sarah Jane opened the door almost straight away. Her red hair caught the daylight and made her skin look paler than usual. I saw a blanket and pillow on the stained-white hall chair. I wondered if she’d sat there all night.

  ‘Catherine, Grip,’ she said. ‘They never came back.’

  13

  I told Sarah Jane to call the police. Carver had passed out upstairs. Grip’s phone had been switched off and no one had heard from him. I told her to report him and Catherine missing.

  ‘I can wait here with you, if you like.’

  She looked at me with a kind of exhausted hate. ‘I’d really rather you didn’t.’

  I left her standing there. When I got to the bottom of the path I heard her shout something, but didn’t turn around. I was tired of hearing what people thought of me. I took a cab into town, towards Rubik’s. Outside, I found a payphone and called Superintendent Parrs again. By the third ring, I thought something was wrong. I held on until I was diverted to voicemail. Again. I waited a few minutes before calling back. This time the call went straight to answerphone.

  ‘One of the girls is missing,’ I said.

  It was around 10 a.m. when I got back to Rubik’s. There were a handful of men already drinking but they kept to themselves and the room was quiet.

  The cheerful Australian barmaid greeted me. ‘You’re up early.’

  ‘I haven’t been to bed yet.’

  ‘Long day already?’ I nodded. ‘Well, what can I get you?’

  I showed her my warrant card. ‘I have a few questions.’

  ‘Oh.’ She busied her hands. ‘Didn’t realize you were a policeman.’

  ‘Non-practising. You worked last night?’

  She had begun wiping down the spotless bar.

  She hesitated.

  ‘I don’t care about the Eight. Cath – Catherine – a friend of mine’s missing. She was here around ten. Works for Zain Carver. I’m sure you know her.’

  She put the rag down. ‘I know her. Served her last night, but didn’t see her again after that. She OK?’

  ‘What about the rest of the night? Anything unusual? Anyone?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘It’s important and it goes no further. I need to find her.’

  She shrugged. ‘Cath was on the lemonade. That’s unusual.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Neil turned up out of the blue.’

  ‘The old bar manager …’

  She nodded. ‘He looked awful.’

  ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘You know Neil?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a prick.’

  ‘Right. You don’t really talk, just listen.’

  ‘Your name’s Mel, isn’t it?’ She nodded. ‘Did you hear about Isabelle Rossiter?’

  ‘That MP’s kid?’ Her hand went to her
chest. ‘Awful.’

  ‘Neil told me he spent that night with you? This would have been Sunday, the fifteenth.’

  She blushed, nodded. ‘He was riled up about something. Stayed on the sofa.’

  ‘And he was there all night?’

  ‘From closing time ’til ten, eleven the next morning.’ It occurred to her what I was asking. ‘Wait, he didn’t have anything to do with it, did he?’

  ‘Apparently not.’ I could hear the disappointment in my voice. The barman almost certainly hadn’t slept with Isabelle on the night she died. Hadn’t taken her phone. ‘Anything else happen last night? Anything at all?’

  ‘Police came by. They’d had a report of some sort of disturbance. Couldn’t see anything, though, so they left. Aside from that, there was just the usual fight outside. Saw an ambulance as we were locking up.’

  An ambulance.

  ‘Last thing: were there any phones handed in last night? This morning, even?’

  ‘Give us a sec?’ She gave me a small, complicated smile and disappeared into the back. She was gone for a couple of minutes and I looked at the old men, sitting in contemplation of their drinks. I thought back to the same time the previous day. The morning alarm, shower, shave and coffee. My meeting with Superintendent Parrs.

  It felt like a month ago.

  The barmaid came back with three phones, one of which was mine. I took it and checked the screen. No messages. No calls.

  ‘Do you have a pen?’ She found one and I wrote my number down on a napkin. ‘If Neil or Catherine come around, if anything happens that you’re not comfortable with, please, give me a call. I promise you can do it in confidence.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said quietly.

  14

  I started calling hospitals. I introduced myself as a police officer and dealt directly with the local central trust. First I asked about DOAs. It had been a quiet night and the only instances were of elderly homeless people, freezing to death.

  There were two living, unidentified arrivals that sounded more likely. One, a young woman, had been ambulanced to the Northern General before midnight.

  Stab wounds to the abdominal area.

  Defence marks on her hands and arms.

  My heart dropped. In a separate incident, a man had been taken to the Royal Infirmary. He’d been badly beaten.

  Grip and Catherine hadn’t been together, and I could well believe they’d ended up in separate hospitals. The Royal Infirmary was closer but I went straight to the Northern General. The girl was stable and resting. In sleep, her hands had moved to cover her heavily stitched, bandaged torso. I wondered why she hadn’t given her name to hospital staff, and why there was no one there for her.

  She wasn’t Catherine, and I left without disturbing her.

  The Royal Infirmary is right in the centre of the city. It was heaving with people feeling the effects of colds, flus and stomach bugs. There were also the ones who had put themselves there. They’d taken one drink or said one word too many.

  I knew the feeling.

  It was the same hospital I had been brought to after Isabelle died. I’d say it brought back bad memories, but they had never really gone away. I approached the front desk, showed my warrant card and made enquiries.

  ‘Police?’ said the clerk. ‘You look like you’re about to check yourself in.’ I tried to smile.

  I was worried about seeing other officers, particularly any who might recognize me, and declined his offer to be escorted to the injured man’s room. When I arrived on the ward and spoke to a nurse, she showed me an empty bed. She was coming to the end of her shift, and talked about the man wearily.

  ‘Wouldn’t talk to us, wouldn’t talk to your lot and walked out of here on a broken leg this morning. Some people don’t bloody help themselves.’ I described Grip but she shook her head.

  ‘This was a big lad. Looked like he was in the life. Coming down off something. Bags under his eyes, messy beard.’ Glen Smithson. Neil. The barman. Sheldon White had cut him loose. I’d missed him by an hour. I wanted to scream.

  The nurse frowned. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, are you all right, son?’ I started to answer and then nodded. I thanked her and left.

  15

  Sheldon White was as good as his word. It felt like Catherine had never lived. And now he’d had full use out of the barman, he’d been cast aside as well. When I arrived back at my flat there was a car waiting. It was a Ford, dark blue, standing out in the No Parking zone. Before I could get to my door, two men climbed out and stood either side of me.

  ‘Aidan Waits?’ said one.

  ‘I’m his cleaner. What’s this about?’

  The first man smirked. ‘Need to ask you a few questions, sir. We step inside?’

  ‘Cards,’ I said. They dug into their pockets. The first man was waspish, tall and thin. He had that zealot stare of a drinker on the dry. In a white suit he’d have looked like an evangelical preacher. He had his card out before I finished asking for it, and I made a point of not looking.

  His partner was heavy-set with bloodshot eyes and hangdog features. He looked like the kind of man who might make up his own nickname. A robust notebook fell out of his jacket pocket and a wedding confetti of scrunched-up receipts fluttered to the ground. He fumbled with the papers at his feet. After a few seconds of this, at the exact moment he was about to show me his card, I turned abruptly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. I felt the look he gave me in the back of my head. I opened the door leading on to the narrow staircase. ‘Come in.’

  ‘You’re not much of a cleaner,’ said the bigger man, looking round the flat. I had, at great length, straightened the room. Reset the lock on the door, swept up the shattered glass and thrown away the broken things that had littered the floor.

  The gutted sofa still stood out, though.

  The thin man closed the door behind him and turned to the room. He walked ahead of his partner, past me, stepping over the previous night’s turned-out drawers, where I had frenziedly searched for my warrant card. Not mentioning them, their obvious disarray, was his way of telling me he’d acknowledged their significance.

  ‘My name’s Detective Sergeant Laskey,’ said the thin man.

  ‘And I’m Detective Constable Riggs,’ said the larger.

  I took the double meaning of their arrival. To cut my personal ties with the Superintendent, and to show Catherine’s lack of importance to the bigger picture. To put me in my place.

  ‘Parrs sent you?’

  They exchanged mystified looks.

  ‘About the girl?’

  ‘What girl would that be?’ said Laskey, folding his arms. His partner, Riggs, took the fat notebook from his jacket pocket and began idly flicking through it.

  ‘The missing one,’ I said.

  Riggs licked his index finger, found a page and read aloud: ‘Brunette in her early twenties, wearing a leather jacket and pencil skirt, in the company of two older men.’ He looked up at me. ‘That girl?’

  Laskey took over. ‘No problem if your memory’s a bit fuzzy, Waits. We’ve got five or six doormen from the Locks to the city centre who were carded by you last night. One of them even remembered you’d been done for stealing drugs.’ So they hadn’t been put in the picture.

  ‘I haven’t been done yet.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘Drink?’ I said.

  ‘Bit early for me, thanks. Bloke was wondering why a suspended police officer’s running around town at gone midnight looking for a missing girl? Interesting question.’

  I didn’t offer anything to Riggs, but went to the fridge and found a cold beer. It was still before eleven and Laskey made a face. I made sure it foamed slightly when I opened it and took a good long pull, more to annoy him than anything.

  I looked up. ‘You were saying …’

  ‘No, you were saying. Why a suspended police officer – awaiting a corruption trial, no less – used his warrant card to question people about a missing
girl.’

  ‘A missing girl,’ I said. ‘Did you come here to answer your own questions?’

  ‘Why didn’t you report her missing?’

  ‘I did. It’s complicated.’

  ‘So uncomplicate it for us,’ said Riggs.

  ‘She was reported missing by her friend this morning. My connection to her’s tentative.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Tentative means something isn’t quite certain or confirmed.’

  He slow-clapped me. ‘How do you know this girl?’

  ‘Through an old case.’ I looked at him. ‘A case is a situation you get assigned to and then try to resolve.’ He stared back at me for a second, then walked to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall with his fists in his pockets.

  I spoke to Laskey. He was so thin it looked as though daylight might pass straight through him. ‘The person in charge of that case was Superintendent Parrs, so I reported it to him. Last night.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘I haven’t heard back. I guess the two of you are what he says.’

  ‘We’re just here for your warrant card, mate.’

  I think I actually laughed.

  ‘We can do this the easy way or—’

  ‘Please,’ I said, crouching to the drawers pulled out on the floor. I sifted through some paperwork until I found what I was looking for. The suspension notice that Parrs had issued as part of my cover and the receipt stapled to it. The receipt covered items I had handed back to the police until such time that I could be trusted with them again. It stated that I had handed back my card, although I hadn’t. I walked past Laskey and handed it to his partner. It was the most irritating thing I could think of at the time. He read the receipt then handed it to his colleague. Laskey read it then looked back at me.

  ‘When’s the trial?’

  ‘I thought it had started already …’

  ‘Y’know, this could be a lot more serious. We could’ve come down here and kicked your fucking head in. Still might do. Card or not, you’ve been up to something. This girl, who is she?’