Those That Remain

by Rob Ashman

  Lucas was swearing behind the glass.

  Jo continued. ‘Who else knew you were in England?’

  ‘A load of people. I have a lot of friends, and they all know when I’m around and when I’m away with work. I tend to be away a lot and I make sure the guys at the club know my schedule in case they need to cover me for league games.’

  ‘League games?’ Before she asked the question, Jo knew where this was going.

  ‘Yes, I belong to a club and play tennis in a league. Sometimes my buddies have to rearrange games if I’m not there, otherwise I forfeit the match.’

  Jo paused, ‘It wouldn’t happen to be Brightwood Country Club, would it?’

  ‘Hey, she’s good,’ Baker said to Bassano. ‘How did you know that?’

  Jo looked at Bassano who was still lost for words. ‘I think we’ll take a short break if that’s okay,’ she said. Bassano announced the adjournment for the benefit of the tape and turned the machine off. They left the room and closed the door behind them.

  Back behind the glass, Jo took the lead. ‘He’s not our guy. He’s not Mechanic. His phone number is on the sheet but he knows nothing about how it got there. Can we run basic checks on the flight manifesto and the Davenport Stables hotel? I’m sure he will check out fine. I’m afraid to say, gentlemen, Ellis Baker is not who we thought he was.’

  ‘He’s a fucking IT consultant. That’s what he is.’ Bassano was pissed off.

  Lucas was stroking his chin. ‘He’s not our guy but we have moved forward here, haven’t we? We know that Mechanic frequents the country clubs in some capacity or another and puts up the posters to attract his victims. The number on the flyer doesn’t belong to Mechanic but somehow he uses it to undertake weeks of counselling.’

  ‘I’m not sure that moves us forward, boss,’ said Bassano, deflated.

  ‘I think I know what’s going on here,’ Jo said out of the blue. ‘Mechanic puts up the counselling poster and waits. The telephone number he uses is for someone he knows is going to be out of town. He taps into their phone while they’re away and gets hold of any calls for the counselling service. When the initial contact has been made, Mechanic gives them a different number, and this is the one he uses for the rest of the counselling.’

  ‘Shit, that’s elaborate. Why go to so much trouble?’ asked Bassano.

  ‘Because it provides Mechanic with a control break in the process. He goes fishing with the first number for a short period, and when he hooks a victim he reverts to the second number. Once he has someone, he doesn’t need the advert anymore and has no further need for the first number. Anyone using the first one afterwards will just contact someone who thinks they have a wrong number. That way there is no sustained link through to Mechanic.’

  ‘But how does he get to use their number in the first place?’ asked Bassano.

  ‘I don’t know. He must have a way of tapping into the line while the person is away. I don’t know if that’s technically possible but he has to be able to access their phone somehow,’ said Jo.

  ‘Maybe he just lives there while they’re away,’ said Bassano sarcastically.

  Lucas and Jo both looked at Bassano, then at each other.

  Lucas shook his head. ‘There’s so much weird shit going on in this case, nothing Mechanic does surprises me. Check out if Ellis Baker has any suspicions his apartment might have been tampered with while he was out of the country. It could be that Mechanic just moves in and waits for people to call. This guy has balls.’

  ‘So we need to look for another number?’ Bassano continued.

  ‘Well, it’s the only way I can read this situation and make sense of it.’ Jo looked exhausted.

  There was a knock on the door, it was one of the custody suite staff. ‘Sir, I have a message for you from the hospital. Hannah McKee has regained consciousness.’

  Lucas turned to Jo. ‘Well, that’s a hell of a theory, doctor, and I think we just got the opportunity to test it out. Why don’t you ask Hannah McKee in the morning?’

  ‘Hold on, sir,’ Bassano said. ‘I’ve had enough of being wrong today. It would be good to end it on a positive note. Just give me twenty minutes, get yourselves a coffee and I’ll meet you in your office.’ He followed the custody officer out of the room.

  Jo looked at Lucas. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘It looks like it. You did well in there,’ Lucas said pointing through the glass at the interview room, ‘and you did well to give us a possible route through with Hannah McKee.’

  ‘Thanks. I could see the whole set of twisted circumstances coming together. Sometimes the most straightforward answer is the best one, however unlikely it might sound.’ Jo was pleased that Lucas had recognized her contribution.

  ‘Well, you might just have nailed several parts of the jigsaw to the table. Let’s get that coffee,’ he said.

  Lucas looked on as Jo tipped the sugar from five sachets into her cup, flattened out the paper strips on the desk and wound them together to form a sugar twist. She didn’t once look at her hands and spoke nonstop, going over the details of the interview while her fingers worked. Lucas picked up the white paper double helix and rolled it in his fingers thoughtfully. He looked at his watch. It was 1.25am.

  Both were seated in Lucas’s office finishing off their coffee when Bassano returned.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘I know it’s out of protocol but I spoke with Hannah McKee on the phone. She was still groggy but lucid enough to talk. I didn’t feel we could wait until the morning.’

  ‘Go on,’ urged Jo.

  Bassano referred to his notes. ‘Yes, she was receiving telephone counselling at the time leading up to the attack. Yes, she saw the poster at the Brightwood Country Club and yes, she was given an alternative phone number to use after the first session. She has the number written down at home. I’ve already sent an officer to the house to get it.’

  Lucas struggled to contain his excitement.

  Bassano closed his notebook.

  ‘There’s one final thing. The counsellor was a woman.’

  30

  Lucas reached the office the next morning churning over the consequences of the latest revelations. He’d got home around quarter past two in the morning and managed to sleep like a baby until half past seven. Although his mind had been racing when he got into bed, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  Bassano was waiting for him, his face tinged grey with exhaustion, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He certainly hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.

  ‘You look dreadful,’ Lucas said as he walked into the incident room.

  ‘Yeah, thanks. Been working on that number from Hannah McKee.’

  ‘Is Jo Sells here?’

  ‘No show as yet.’ Bassano drained the last mouthful of coffee and headed to the steaming jug on top of the machine to get another. Jo walked in.

  ‘Morning!’ She was just that little too bright and cheery for either of her colleagues. ‘How are you both today?’

  ‘Jaded,’ was the one word response from Bassano. Lucas said nothing but tilted his head in Bassano’s direction and grimaced.

  ‘Thoughts, from yesterday?’ Lucas was keen to engage them on their new information.

  ‘A woman. I didn’t see that one coming.’ Bassano was first off the mark. ‘When we interviewed Lillian Lang it never crossed my mind to ask the sex of the person doing the damn counselling.’

  Lucas assumed this was the reason for Bassano not having a good night’s sleep, and he was right. He had spent all night kicking himself.

  ‘It suggests that Mechanic is being helped. It could be a wife or girlfriend, someone who holds the same beliefs as him. Someone with the same need to kill but without the necessary strength or resolve to carry it out. It could be a symbiotic relationship,’ Jo said.

  ‘A simming what?’ Bassano was not at his sharpest this morning.

  ‘Symbiotic. They feed off each other, a marriage of conv
enience, if you like. She provides him with the targets and he provides her with the dead bodies. The other rationale could be she is doing this under duress. Mechanic may be forcing her.’

  ‘Could that be happening in this case?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘I think it’s unlikely. From what we understand the sessions take place over a considerable period of time and it would be hard to maintain that if you were being pressurized to do it. And anyway, there are far too many opportunities to warn the victim off. No, I don’t think coercion is happening here.’

  ‘So now we are looking for two people. At least that gives us a hundred percent more to aim for.’ Lucas tried to sound up beat.

  ‘Yes that’s what I figured,’ said Bassano.

  ‘Right, let’s talk about the plan for today?’ Lucas was eager to get going.

  Bassano consulted his notebook. ‘I have the address for the new phone number Hannah McKee provided. It’s a disused warehouse about twenty-five miles east of here on the Brunswick Industrial Park. It belongs to a company called GAI Circles Inc which is a landscape gardening outfit. After yesterday’s debacle I figured me and Jo could go and check it out.’ Lucas and Jo nodded in agreement.

  Bassano continued, ‘Boss, can you co-ordinate the interviewing of Hannah McKee now that she’s conscious and think through how we are going to alert the country clubs without giving the game away? The other thing is, we need to follow up on Mr-IT-blowjob to see if his place was disturbed when he was away.’

  ‘Okay, the country club is tricky. It’s too soon for people to know that Mechanic is back in operation. Let me think about it. We’ll meet back here after lunch.’

  Jo Sells sat in silence for most of the journey to the industrial estate while Bassano bombarded her with his witty lines and awkward questions. Despite his fatigue he’d decided to ratchet up his game a couple of notches but she still wasn’t falling for his winning routine. This wasn’t how it usually went for him and the more he flirted, the frostier she became. For Jo the journey was a long one.

  They parked on a piece of derelict land located outside the main gates and walked the short distance to the unit identified on the address. There was no security and no fencing around the estate and it showed.

  ‘Are you sure this is right?’ Jo asked looking at the dilapidated buildings, glad to be out of the car at last.

  ‘Yes, that’s the address they gave me.’ He showed her the page in his notebook.

  ‘No one has worked on this site for years, it’s a total mess.’

  The industrial estate housed an enormous three-storey warehouse and several smaller prefabricated office blocks. Every window in the entire complex had been smashed and the doors either kicked in or missing. Paint and rendering flaked from the walls like a bad skin condition and tufts of grass grew between the cracks in the road. Sheeting from the roofs of the smaller buildings had been removed along with large portions of brickwork, presumably stolen to complete someone’s home project.

  They approached what looked like the main entrance to the warehouse. It housed a large set of double doors which at one time had been protected by a lockable roller shutter. The shutter was nowhere to be seen, taken and sold for scrap, and the doors were hanging from their hinges, their wooden panels ripped away. Inside the hallway the acrid stench of smoke and urine hung in the air. Fast food wrappers were strewn over the floor.

  Bassano pointed to a scattering of syringes and balls of tinfoil on the ground. ‘Tramps and hobos. They light fires to keep warm at night and shoot up when they have the gear. Stay sharp, we might encounter a couple of them.’ Bassano was trying his hand at a little early morning humour but Jo drew her gun from her shoulder holster.

  ‘Do you know how to use that?’ Bassano looked surprised.

  ‘I had twelve weeks field training and I think it’s necessary.’

  ‘I was joking. There’s only a slim chance we’ll run into any hobos. Put it away, you’re making me nervous.’

  Jo turned on her heels to face him.

  ‘Look, Bassano, I think it’s necessary. Not because there’s a slim chance we might run into a hobo, it’s necessary because there’s a slim chance we might run into a guy who’s killed sixteen people.’

  Bassano considered her answer and drew his sidearm. ‘Good point.’

  ‘And while we’re on the subject,’ she continued, ‘I’ve seen your training log and it reads like a piece of shit. “You couldn’t hit a barn door” was one of the comments from your range assessment. “Consistently fails to follow protocols and drills” was another. So I need this,’ she said holding up her weapon, ‘to protect the both of us.’

  Bassano said nothing.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject and clearing the air,’ she continued, though Bassano was unaware they were on a subject or clearing the air. ‘No, I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t want a date.’

  ‘Well, er … I wasn’t asking …’ he was completely wrong-footed by her direct approach.

  ‘Yes you were. And that’s not because I don’t date guys from the job, it’s because I don’t date, period. Got it? So pack it in with your adolescent Italian stallion “I’ll crack her eventually” routine, because it’s never gonna happen. Is that clear enough for you? Back off.’

  Bassano tried to stumble out a reply. ‘Er, well I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘Focus on my expertise and competence and less on my ass and we’ll get along just fine. And just so you don’t misinterpret anything,’ she paused to be sure he was keeping up. ‘That means you focus on my expertise and competence. Are we clear?’

  Bassano looked at her and made a gesture that resembled an apology, but just so he was being clear he said ‘Sorry.’ She fixed him with a glare and he looked away. Jo felt much better.

  They exited the hallway in silence and entered the vast open space of the main building. Any equipment which was installed there had long gone, but there was debris strewn all over the floor and empty cable ties hung along the walls. The building had been stripped bare of anything that was valuable: copper cable, light fittings, even portions of the girder work supporting the structure had been hacked away.

  ‘Careful where you put your feet,’ Bassano said trying to be helpful as they picked their way across the centre of the building.

  ‘What was the address given by the phone company?’ Jo asked.

  Bassano stopped and consulted his notes. ‘It was GAI Circles Inc, Main Building, Level 3, Brunswick Industrial Estate.’

  Jo scanned the cavernous expanse of the warehouse. ‘Look.’ She pointed toward the north wall. ‘There are offices on that mezzanine and, if I’m not mistaken, they’re three floors high. Let’s take a look.’

  They crossed the expanse of cluttered floor to reach the metal steps which ran up to the offices. The structure was unstable as hell. They both took a firm hold of the handrail and walked up the stairs.

  ‘Keep close to the wall,’ Bassano said. The whole structure was swaying and he was sure he could feel the metal staircase coming away from the brickwork.

  There were three landing areas. The first two lay empty and were used for storage but at the top there was a walkway which ran along the front of three prefabricated offices. Each one had its door open and its windows smashed. They went into the first office crunching shards of glass under their feet.

  Unlike the rest of the property this still had signs of its previous occupants. Broken furniture and papers covered the floor and metal cabinets still containing old ledgers and files were lined up along one wall. Bassano opened a drawer and removed a document. It contained pencil sketches of a garden layout showing the patio area, flower borders and a brick barbecue. In another file there were more drawings of tree-lined walkways along what looked like a shopping mall.

  ‘Why is this lot still here when the rest of the building has been trashed?’ Bassano said.

  ‘Perhaps even the hobos won’t risk their lives climbing up here.’

  She appro
ached Bassano with a piece of paper in her hand.

  ‘Look at this. It’s a copy invoice for thirteen hundred bucks.’ Bassano took it and read the details on the printed document.

  ‘So?’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Look at the address.’

  Bassano read it out loud, ‘Glandford Landscapes, Main Building, Level 3, Brunswick Industrial Estate.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the same address but the company name is different. We’re in the right place but no one has been here for years. Let’s check out the other offices,’ Jo said.

  They walked out onto the landing and into the other office. This one had much less litter on the floor and was empty of any filing cabinets or furniture. Further along the landing it was the same with the third office.

  Bassano leaned against the wall and looked at the printed invoice in his hand. ‘The tech guys were adamant this was the place. I asked them to check it twice because I knew this was a derelict site. We know we’re in the right place because the address on the invoice confirms it. How can that be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Jo. ‘But one thing is for sure, no telephone counselling went on here.’

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Bassano.

  ‘Look around. There are no phone lines.’

  31

  Lucas wasn’t arranging interviews, nor was he working his head around the tricky problem of how to alert the country clubs without giving the game away about Mechanic. He was pushing the door open on a seedy run-down café wondering what the hell he was going to find on the other side. This was Harper’s favourite place to drink coffee.

  Lucas entered from the bright sidewalk and couldn’t see a damn thing. Even when his eyes had adjusted to the low light, he found it difficult to navigate his gaze around the place because of the smoke. It hung from the low ceiling like seaside fog and left a bitter taste in his mouth. There was a long bar running down the left side with a curious mixture of tables and chairs dotted around the room. Nothing matched. It was a haphazard style of interior design. The one thing that did match was the guy serving behind the counter with the haphazard sort of face. His oversized nose, buck teeth and thick black mono-brow gave him the look of a kid’s toy.