by Lee McGeorge
Cornel was alone. The clothes were folded neatly on the draining board. Dutifully he remained in the back yard awaiting the return of the officer. Then a thought... he hadn’t told them just how dangerous McGovern was. What if the constable ran into him?
The back gate opened. Two more officers arrived.
“Your colleague is inside searching,” he said.
“Uh-huh, and who are you?”
Cornel showed his warrant card again and explained as the first policeman came back into view and opened the back door.
“Empty rooms up to the top, but someone has been living here. There’s food, water and bedding in the main room.”
“What about that?” The new constable was pointing to the padlocked door. They examined it, they pulled a pry-tool out, they popped off the hasp and staple with relative ease. They descended the stairs with a flashlight, they pressed the door at the bottom of the stairs. Another lock. They shouldered the door and broke through.
----- X -----
Paul was preparing sticky labels that batched a set of fish to an experiment when his mobile phone beeped. It had signalled a few times and always sent his heart racing. He checked the display expecting to see an advert, another false alarm. He’d had a few random special offers appear on his phone, each one almost giving him a heart attack.
The screen read, ‘Nisha’.
A surging shock ran through him.
The bitch had made it to the lower door and opened it just enough to trigger the message. That didn’t necessarily mean she had opened the door, but she was definitely working on it. She had to get through two padlocked doors and he was only a few minutes away.
He ran. At his locker he buttoned the yoke to his trousers and fixed his knives into place. He would kill her this time for sure. He ran as fast as he could along the corridors of UCL, swiped out through the security gate into Gower Street and flagged a black cab. Fortuitous. It was right there.
He could walk the distance in twenty minutes at a brisk pace. Run there in ten minutes. The cab was probably as fast as running when traffic was taken into account.
The fucking bitch. She had gotten to the door, had tried to get out. He should have killed her. Should have done it despite her crushed head.
The taxi came into the street. There were five police cars, one police van, an ambulance and a fire engine outside the squat.
“Just here is fine,” Paul said to the driver before he got too close. He stepped out of the cab, paid the driver and allowed the taxi to move on. Paul took his telephone and pretended to have a conversation. He leaned against a garden wall nonchalantly all the while watching the drama unfold only fifty yards away.
He saw a fire-fighter carrying the huge cutters, the Jaws of Life they called them. There were police milling about in the street. Paramedics came out of the alley and took a stretcher from the back of the ambulance.
Oh, fuck! They’d found her.
Was she alive? Could she say anything?
He wanted to stay, needed to. He needed to see her emerge from the house either strapped to a stretcher with an IV drip or wrapped in black plastic.
A policeman was watching him. He was distant, but watching. Paul lowered the telephone and with as slow and unsuspicious movements as possible, he pretended to end his call and slowly shuffled away.
PART V
The squat was discovered. Nisha was discovered. The dead body of Joseph Frady was discovered. A net was tightening around him and it had come from nowhere.
There were flashes of panic. Sudden physical jolts with a surge of adrenalin. Paul was back at the bedsit grabbing things, paperwork, stuffing it into plastic carrier bags. The panic rose to a frenzy. At the lock-up he had a bag of cash and emergency clothes but here in the bedsit he had all the documents and work he’d been preparing to create the Alan Jay identity. He took the papers and ignored everything else. He wanted his notes off the wall, the research into illness.
The doorbell rang. A slow, ding... dong...
He froze. Seconds ticked by. He came out of his room and looked down the stairs. The front door had frosted glass to obscure the callers but he could see two people outside dressed in black.
Police?
Ding... Dong...
He double checked there was nothing left of work on Alan Jay. He checked back over the room quickly. Notes on the wall, research into mental illness…
Ding… Dong…
He had the identity work, fuck the rest. He went to the bathroom and locked the door. The window opened onto a roof extension then on to a wall separating the properties. He climbed through the window, his hands shaking almost uncontrollably.
How the fuck had this happened? Jesus Christ. The mobile phone tripwire had signalled and minutes later the place was swarming with police. Firefighters with cutting equipment? Probably for the chains. Paramedics with a stretcher? It had to be Nisha. It couldn’t be anything else because only that could set off the tripwire.
Oh, fuck. Why hadn’t he killed her? He had no problem killing the kid in the cellar next door so why hadn’t he killed her too?
Frady.
Joseph Frady. The dead body in the cellar. It was his identity now.
Would they find his body? Of course they would, but when they found it could they identify him? Probably, most likely. They would identify him and find he has bank accounts, they would find he has a job, works at UCL. How long would it take? Police at the bedsit? Had they already tracked him there?
Oh, fucking hell!
Paul was fast to the lock-up, a 24 hour storage facility of climate controlled corridors with steel rolling shutters. His space was no more than a single square meter of floor space with three meters of height. Sat in the centre of his space was a backpack. It contained clean clothes and an awful lot of cash. He stuffed his documents into the backpack and took it with him.
If the police had found Frady’s bank details, they would find the lock-up too.
Get paranoid, stay paranoid. Evade and escape.
Fuck! They took his photograph when he began working at UCL. He was on CCTV in banks using Joseph Frady’s credentials. Nisha knew he was Paul McGovern.
Stress. Tension...
Calm down. Take control...
He was walking aimlessly, heading out of the area on foot. He called into a café. Time to think. Identity, change identity again. In his backpack was everything he needed to become Alan Jay. He could apply for that new unblemished passport based on a dead child. He wasn’t ready, he hadn’t prepared all the groundwork; he had to make space and do it. That was the chance he’d been crafting, to walk right out of the country on a clean identity and start fresh. Now he had to do it and do it fast.
Cash.
He left the café and found a cash machine to empty Joseph Frady’s bank account. He knew the machine would have a video camera but he would be gone soon enough. As he stepped away he glanced at his reflection in a darkened shop window and saw himself with the beard and unkempt hair. He stopped for a longer time and watched his reflection. Cars and pedestrians passed behind him unawares of who he was. He looked distinctive as Joseph Frady. He didn’t look anything like Paul McGovern anymore, but soon enough those two identities would be placed side by side, the scholarly writer and the unkempt fish keeper. The Joseph Frady identity was good, but it was finished.
Paul moved on from his dark reflection, wondering, looking at his surroundings for clues on how to proceed. He needed a new look. He could start calling himself Alan Jay now but he needed to look different. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing himself as a punk rocker with a rainbow coloured Mohawk and matching clothes but he knew he didn’t have the temperament to pull it off.
A barber shop. No customers. The barber sitting in the chair and reading a newspaper.
“Hi. Can you do my hair now?”
“Of course, Sir. Please.” The barber was Turkish or some other deep Mediterranean extract. There was a sign by the mirror, offering Turkish wet sha
ve and hot towel massage. The barber himself sported a huge moustache, the sort that looked like a brush.
“I like your moustache. Do you think I would look good with a moustache like yours?” Paul asked.
“Ha. Any man looks good with a moustache like this,” the barber joked.
“Could you shave me like that?”
“Of course. And what about your hair, do you want hair cut also?”
“Please. Something... neat. I need to look very neat and respectable, but not too short.”
“Not too short,” the barber said as he threw a sheet around Paul. “Not too short, respectable and a fine moustache.”
----- X -----
Corneliu didn’t know what to do with himself once Nisha was put into the ambulance. Her face was so swollen her jaw looked twice the size it should. Paramedics said it was a typical jaw fracture. She was crying profusely and clinging to the hand of the fire-fighter that had cut her free. The paramedics had put a red blanket over her on the stretcher and fixed her neck in a brace before moving her. They suspected a skull fracture, but she was alive and likely to remain so. Everybody had a job to do except him.
Slowly the scene changed from emergency to investigation and more support officers and forensics arrived. There was an air of competency about the proceedings. Blue and white tape had sealed off the road and houses. There was information exchange between firefighters, police and medics. It was organised.
“Can you come with me,” the original policeman who had first arrived asked. “We’re going to run you down to the station to take a statement.”
Cornel nodded and got into the back of the police car. There was a computer screen in the dashboard displaying information.
Body located, murder. Suspect may be in area. Priority. Paul McGovern. IC1. 160+cm. 20+yo. Slim build. Suspect highly dangerous.
Latis smiled. He hadn’t mentioned Paul McGovern by name that he could remember yet they were looking for him. How had that happened? Blackwell? It must be. Scotland Yard through to the operational control room. A link perhaps from the name Nisha Khumari? However it happened just demonstrated competence.
----- X -----
Paul tried on clothes in Camden market. It was a store selling retro clothing and he found some boring nondescript suits. He scrutinised himself in the mirror. The clothes were good, the hairstyle and moustache were very good, but something about him looked young. He looked like a pretender, the disguise wasn’t perfect.
He bought some tinted glasses; little penny lenses like John Lennon with a delicate blue shade to the glass. The glasses made a difference but it looked like he was trying to disguise himself. He wasn’t living the character as comfortably as he had the persona of Joseph Frady. He had to blend in and vanish. It was imperative he got this right.
As he walked away from Camden he passed a sleepy looking hair salon. At first he walked past but after a moment of thinking he came back.
“Hi... is it possible to dye my hair to make it look silvery, or grey?”
There were two women inside, both doing nothing. “It is,” said the one who looked in charge. “What is it you want to do?”
“I’m an actor,” Paul said. “I’m auditioning for a play but I need to look older than I am. Is there a way to make me appear... well, I need to look old and boring.”
----- X -----
It was almost nine in the evening when Corneliu arrived back at the hotel. He sent Noica a text message. ‘McGovern hideout discovered. Kidnapped girl rescued alive. British police closing in.’ He poured a drink, kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed.
There had been a lot of handshakes at the station. They liked him here, more than in Romania. Best of all he genuinely felt as though he’d done something good. If he hadn’t seen her clothes she would have died in that cellar. The officers said she wanted to see him. When they told her how she was found, they said she cried and asked for him. It hit him emotionally. No girl rescued through his work had ever asked to see him in person. It was something, he realised only today, that he’d always wanted. His ego had craved that recognition and it had repeatedly gone hungry. All this time he’d wanted somebody to say ‘thank you’. Until today nobody ever had. Nisha Khumari was crying. She wanted to see him. Today, for the first time that he could remember, his life had value to someone else.
Poor Nisha. Her cheek was shattered and her jaw and skull were fractured. She required reconstructive surgery to scaffold the bone which would leave her face misshapen, but there was no damage to her brain. McGovern had cut her breasts and hands. Her wounds were psychologically terrifying, but they weren’t life threatening.
Unlucky to be a victim. Lucky to have survived.
The police had recorded the crimes of kidnapping, wounding, grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, sexual assault, rape and attempted murder.
The eye opener for Latis was that McGovern had used homemade chloroform. The blisters on Nisha’s lips suggested phosgene poisoning, a by-product from the way he’d isolated the chemicals and it explained the equipment and bottles found at the squat. The doctors said that poorly made chloroform would have killed her. It was another revelation. McGovern was technically adept in chemistry. Another blow against Noica’s assertion that McGovern was losing his mind. He was intelligent and proficient; he was not the incapable maniac that Noica had described.
The body in the adjacent building was too decomposed to give any immediate clues, but the coroners assessment was murder. There was a lot of internal bleeding and organ damage, but death was caused by someone standing behind the victim and cutting their throat using their right hand. The coroner noted that even without this fatal wound, the other injuries were non-survivable.
His phone beeped, a text message. He was expecting Noica but instead it came from Blackwell. ‘BBC News McGovern NOW.’
Cornel was frustrated by the TV remote control but caught the tail end of the story. Then he realised the ticker-tape at the bottom of the screen was one hundred percent McGovern. ‘A twenty two year old London woman has been rescued by police after being kidnapped’ read the first message. ‘Police are searching for Paul McGovern, 22, from Oxford in relation to kidnap and murder - The public are warned not to approach McGovern but to dial 999.’
The news loop was beginning again when Noica telephoned.
“Corneliu, what’s happened, has he been found?”
“Not yet. I found Nisha Khumari. She’s alive. She was locked in a basement. McGovern had her. He kidnapped her and... I’m not sure yet what he did exactly but she’s badly injured. She’ll live. It’s national news here. I’m just waiting for the story to begin again on TV to see, but they’re advertising McGovern nationwide.”
“You found Nisha? You personally?” Corneliu hummed to affirm. “Is McGovern still in Britain?” Noica asked.
“Yes. At least until a few days ago.”
“You’re amazing, Corneliu, you were supposed to look at his background yet here you are rescuing women.”
“Rescuing women,” he found it hard not to smile. “I suppose so,” he said with as much humility as he could muster. “Lucian, the news story is about to come back on, I want to watch it and see how wide they’re spreading McGovern’s picture.”
“OK. You do that. I’m going to re-task someone and have them meet you in London.”
“Re-task someone?”
“There’s a man,” Noica said, “His name is Bogdan Pascu, he is doing the same as you out in America, trying to piece together McGovern’s family history in Seattle in case he tried to make it there. If I’d realised you would be getting close to McGovern I would have had Bogdan there with you. Bogdan has... he has experience.”
Latis promised to send all information to Noica along with an explanation on how McGovern had been tracked and everything he knew about McGovern’s movements. He ended the call and went back to the TV news.
His telephone rang again.
“Corneliu, it’s Peter Blackwell. We�
�d like you to participate in a press conference tomorrow morning. It will go live on television and push the name of Paul McGovern out into the public consciousness. We think going public is the best way to get McGovern. It’s scheduled for ten thirty but I’d like to talk with you beforehand to rehearse the message. Will you do this?”
Even Scotland Yard wanted his help. Today was the best day, today was what police-work was all about.
“Yes... Yes, I will.”
“Good work on finding the girl, Corneliu. Sincerely, good work.”
----- X -----
“Hi, do you have vacancies? I need to stay for a week at least, possibly longer.”
It was a sleepy bed and breakfast on the edge of Wembley, a forgotten kind of place in a forgotten kind of district. The sign on the front door read ‘Vacancies’ and Paul suspected they didn’t turn it over very often.
“We do, we do, we have some room for you.” The lady was Scottish. “I’m Wendy,” she said.
“Wendy, yes.” Paul cleared his throat then said, “I’m Alan,” with authority. “Can I pay cash up front, Wendy? I don’t have my credit card with me.”
“Aye, we like cash, we like it, we like it.” she replied.
He tried to be boring, to say little and mumble, but Wendy had a chatty manner. Why was he in London, where had he come from, what were his plans. He mumbled responses about working with statistics and again realised the importance of having a fully formed character to inhabit. He wanted to disappear into the background but the lack of certainty in his answers belied a shifty nature. The physical Alan Jay disguise seemed to exude confidence. The bold moustache and shiny hair, the suit, the glasses. The outward appearance was memorable rather than invisible, but there was no trace of Paul McGovern to the display. He looked like a professional older man who took care of himself. He had the image of a man who should walk with his head held tall. Not someone who mumbled half answers.