Before Her Eyes

by Jack Jordan

  Grace Kennedy had been Hayley Miller’s best friend, and held a secret from everyone, even her own husband.

  Hayley’s own sister was in a relationship with a man who had been questioned over her disappearance. Josie hated Naomi and had clearly lied to the police about who had attacked her just so she could get Naomi out of their lives.

  And Blake, a man close to the investigation, who knew every lead the inquiry took, could cover his tracks before he was discovered.

  The whole thing was a mess.

  Marcus went to the kitchen to refill his coffee mug, and pulled out his phone.

  He thought of Billy and Kate sitting in the patrol car outside Naomi’s house, munching on fries and adding to the fast-food bags bulging in the footwell.

  ‘Billy. How’s she doing?’

  ‘We’ve … er … we’ve gone to grab a coffee.’

  ‘How long ago?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘About fifteen minutes.’

  His grip steeled around the handle of the mug. ‘Get back there and check on her the minute you arrive. Next time, pack a flask.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He ended the call and sighed. He could almost understand why Lisa was so aggressive. Almost.

  He took the coffee back to his desk and eyed the CCTV footage still running on the computer screen. He needed to sleep off the day, but he couldn’t let Naomi down; he couldn’t let Lisa win. All that was waiting for him outside the office was the cold back seat of his car and the night sky staring in through the windows.

  He took a gulp of coffee, opened a file and began to read, repeating any standout facts in his head until his eyes blurred.

  The phone cut through the silence like a scream.

  Marcus rubbed his eyelids until his eyeballs squeaked beneath his fists and picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this,’ the woman fell silent for a second, as if reading his name from a page, ‘Detective Sergeant Marcus Campbell?’

  ‘Speaking.’ He stifled a yawn behind his hand.

  ‘I’m Alison Moore, head nurse on the ICU ward at Balkerne Heights Hospital. I’m afraid this call is coming quite late …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about the time. I’m at the office anyway.’

  ‘No … I mean, one of my colleagues should have called before, but it was overlooked.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘On Josie Callaghan’s file, it states that you and an Inspector Elliott wished to be informed if anything changed with the patient’s care.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘The patient discharged herself.’

  Marcus instinctively clutched his stomach. His mouth dried.

  ‘But … is she well enough to do that? Couldn’t you stop her?’

  ‘We tried, but she was adamant. We couldn’t keep her from leaving, not unless we had a reason to believe she was a danger to herself or others. She was going to be moved to another wing anyway, now that she’s no longer at death’s door, but she began to make a scene.’

  ‘What time did she discharge herself?’

  ‘Just after three p.m. … yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘I’m sorry you weren’t called sooner. I tried to get hold of Inspector Elliott this evening, but the call went straight to voicemail.’

  ‘Thanks for calling.’

  Marcus ended the call and stared out into the empty office.

  Dane was gone. Josie was out there. Naomi was alone.

  He stood up from his desk, gulped down the cold coffee and snatched his coat from the rack.

  It was time to talk to Josie.

  FIFTY-SIX

  George was lying beneath the window, his breaths wheezing in and out of his lungs. Josie let the knife clatter to the floor. Something wet and warm splattered against Naomi’s face. Josie grabbed the chair and dragged it up onto all four legs.

  ‘Why?’ Naomi shouted. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  ‘You need to know what it’s like to be me,’ Josie spat. She gripped Naomi’s chin. ‘To have everyone that you hold dear taken away.’

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  Josie paced the room. The floorboards creaked beneath her weight.

  ‘WHAT DID YOU DO?’

  ‘I aimed to stab him in his lower back, but the blade darted between his ribs. It sounds like I might have nicked a lung. Breathe for us, George. Let us hear where we got you.’

  George breathed quickly, rasping and desperate.

  ‘Yeah, sounds like a pierced lung. Not a nice way to go, but then he shouldn’t have interfered. This is what happens when people let you into their lives, Naomi. You destroy them.’

  ‘You’re despicable!’ Naomi lunged forward in the chair. The rope tugged at her wrists.

  ‘Take some responsibility!’ Josie spat. ‘You are the reason for all of this, don’t you see that? None of this would have happened if you’d let Dane move on. If you’d let me have him.’

  ‘You blame me,’ Naomi said. ‘But you got yourself into this mess. You’re the one who is so obsessed with a man that you don’t realise how weak you really are. No woman needs a man to define her, and yet here you are, throwing your life away and destroying others just because you can’t get your own way!’

  ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through,’ Josie replied. ‘You have no idea how much it took to survive, to get this far in life. After years of abuse from my brothers, neglect from my drunk of a mother, living in my dead sister’s shadow, I was just starting to make something of myself. I met a man who finally understood my pain and who wasn’t frightened by it. He knew what it felt like to wander through life covered in wounds. We understood each other, we loved each other, and then you took the only good thing in my life away from me.’

  She bent down by the chair, sniffling back tears.

  ‘Feel,’ she said, and ran her arm beneath Naomi’s bound hands. The surface felt warped in places, like fleshy studs in her skin. ‘Feel that? My brothers used to burn me with cigarettes, just because they could. Mum was always too drunk to hear me scream. When my sister disappeared, my mother’s mind went with her, and things got even worse. I spent so many years alone until I met Dane. I can’t let you take him away from me, Naomi. I won’t be alone again. I’d rather die.’

  Naomi could hear George’s breaths growing more ragged. They sounded wet with blood.

  Suddenly it hit her. The police weren’t coming, and Marcus would never unearth the truth. She and George were going to die.

  The doorbell rang, and everyone in the room fell silent.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Josie and Dane shared a flat on the rough side of town, where the roads were scarred with potholes, and weeds were left to grow hip-high on the lawns. The block of flats would have been enviable once, but three decades on, the bricks were stained with green moss and crumbling from years of rain and frost. The drainpipes were blocked with decaying leaves. Rainwater trickled out like pus from a wound.

  Marcus stood before the front door and pressed the buzzer for Josie’s flat. She had been desperate to leave the hospital, but looking up at the block, Marcus wondered why.

  He peered through the cracked glass in the door and into the communal hallway. An abandoned sofa had been shoved beneath the stairwell, moth-eaten and frayed. A pair of green cat’s eyes stared out from the shadows and watched him on the other side of the glass.

  He pressed the buzzer again, just as a gust of wind blew against the door and caused it to open and shut in a succession of shivers. He pushed it open, eyeing the staircase, then looked back over his shoulder at his car parked on the road. He felt sick with hunger. Coffee churned in his stomach and exhaustion burned the backs of his eyes. He was thinking of turning back to the warmth of his car when the first spit of rain blew against his neck and coaxed him inside.

  The air smelt of damp, which speckled the walls and ceiling like flicks of brown paint. Cigarette ends swam in a child’s cup by a stranger
’s front door, filled with water that was black with tar. He listened to the silence of the building and the creaking of the door behind him. Something was unsettling him, tightening around his throat like a noose; all he had to do now was jump.

  He took the stairs and paused at the first landing, listening to the lives hidden on the other side of the walls. Even without seeing their faces, he pitied them. Of all the things they could have done with their lives, they had chosen to stay here.

  An argument erupted behind the door of flat number 14. Marcus flinched and tightened his hands into fists. He took a deep breath and kept walking, up the next flight of stairs.

  It was a completely different atmosphere on the second floor, as though nothing lived there but trapped air and echoes from the lives below. Water dripped from a hole in the ceiling and soaked into the carpet.

  Marcus had learned to listen to his gut over the years. And it was then, as the hairs on his arms rose and his stomach began to churn, that he knew there was something wrong going on behind the silence.

  He stepped towards flat 18, stopping the second he saw the door was ajar. He didn’t know his hands were shaking until he pushed at the door with the tips of his fingers. It creaked on its hinges. Open doorways stood out against the dark.

  ‘Ms Callaghan?’ He rapped his knuckles against the door. The sound echoed through the flat. ‘It’s DS Campbell. I’m going to come inside now.’

  He took a step forward and flicked the light switch on the wall. Nothing. He tried again, flick, flick, flick, flick, but the darkness seemed to get thicker. He took the small torch from his waist and shone the beam at his feet. The light crept along filthy carpet and up walls covered in tobacco-stained wallpaper that had peeled away from the skirting boards. He traced the beam of light across the carpet and stopped when he saw dark stains dried into the fabric. Cool sweat broke out on his back and forehead. He took a step forward and crouched down, studying the crimson flakes peeling up from the carpet. He scratched at one and felt it dig beneath his fingernail. Blood.

  ‘Josie?’

  He stood on weak legs and raised the torch. The beam danced against a wall in the next room, quivering in his unsteady hand. He stood in the doorway and moved it around, darting over a sofa, a television, a coffee table piled with crockery covered in scraps of food, growing mould like coats of fur. Flies buzzed around in the darkness, darting briefly before the light and flashing beastly shadows against the walls. Marcus batted them away with the back of his hand.

  A sound made him stop mid step: a distant clink of metal. He fought the urge to hush the flies buzzing around the head of the torch. There it was again. He walked back towards the entrance hall, his head cocked to the right, and followed the sound towards a closed door.

  He was alone, in a flat he hadn’t been invited into, with only his word that the front door was open when he arrived, following a hunch that Josie was hiding more than she was telling them. If he found something, he would have to explain it, and if he was hurt, no one would know to look for him there. So many things could go wrong.

  He placed his hand on the door handle. The door creaked open and the smell hit him instantly.

  Blood. Urine. Faeces. Sweat turned putrid in the hot room. The torchlight crept up the carpet and fell on a bare foot. It moved upwards, onto a man’s calf covered in inflamed welts. The rattling sound started up again. Marcus followed the sound with the torch beam and took in the sight of the naked body of a man, handcuffed to a pipe beneath the radiator. His wrists were bloodied around the metal cuffs, which he continued rattling against the pipe. An iron lay beside him with flesh melted onto the metal, matted with hair and blood.

  The man’s eyes were swollen shut and bruised black, and his nose was covered in a layer of dried blood that had blocked his nostrils.

  ‘Help … me …’

  It was only then, as the words were forced through the split lips, that Marcus realised he was staring at Dane Hannah.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Ms Hannah, It’s PC Edwards,’ a voice said outside the door. The letter box opened briefly with a screech. ‘We just want to check you’re all right.’

  The words filled Naomi’s throat, ready to be screamed from behind the gag that Josie had shoved back into her mouth, but the thought of the knife plunging into George’s neck forced her to bite down on the fabric. The letter box banged shut.

  ‘Say one word and I’ll kill him,’ Josie whispered. She was crouched beside George, who lay on the floor by Naomi’s feet, so close she could hear the blood bubbling in his throat every time he breathed.

  She tried to speak behind the gag. It slipped further down her throat and made her retch. Josie yanked the sock from her mouth.

  ‘They won’t leave until I confirm I’m all right.’

  George coughed violently.

  ‘You’ll tell them everything’s fine if you want him to live,’ Josie said, pulling at the rope around Naomi’s ankles until the blood rushed back into her feet. ‘Keep the light off and only open the door a crack.’

  Naomi nodded as she tried to think of a way to save them without sending George to his grave.

  ‘Pretend you were asleep,’ Josie whispered as she untied her wrists. ‘Tell them you’re fine and you’re going back to bed.’

  Naomi nodded and flexed her wrists as the rope began to loosen around her ankles. It was night-time, then. She wondered how long she had been unconscious from the blow to her head.

  The doorbell rang again. George groaned deeply by her feet. His breath tickled the skin on her ankles.

  ‘Shut up,’ Josie spat, and kicked him in the stomach. He groaned and coughed up blood, spewing it against the floorboards and Naomi’s bare feet.

  Naomi rubbed her wrists and wiped George’s blood from her face.

  ‘Go!’ Josie hissed.

  Naomi lurched to her feet and stumbled, her head not yet connected with her limbs. She scrabbled at the locks on the door, smearing blood on the metal. Cool air drifted in.

  ‘Yes?’ she said through the crack in the door.

  ‘Ms Hannah, it’s PCs Billy Edwards and Kate Finch. We wanted to check you were all right.’

  ‘I was sleeping.’

  Naomi heard George’s voice, smothered by a gag or a hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ PC Edwards replied. ‘We won’t disturb you again.’

  ‘It’s all right, it makes me feel safe.’

  Hear the fear in my voice. Smell the blood.

  She followed her hand up the wall and felt the light switch beneath her fingers. If she turned on the light they would see the blood, but George would be dead, the knife in his neck. She imagined the handle quivering with the beat of his heart as blood spurted up the wall. She lowered her hand.

  ‘We’ll be here all night. We’re parked just outside if you need us.’

  Naomi nodded, and stood in the doorway even as they began to walk down the garden path, lingering in the hope that they would notice she didn’t want them to go.

  ‘Close the door!’ Josie hissed. Her voice was only a whisper, but Naomi jolted at the sound and shut the door.

  A whimper escaped her lips the moment the hand clasped around her throat and pinned her against the wall.

  ‘Nice try, but they’re thick as shit,’ Josie said, her words so close to Naomi’s face that she could taste them. ‘They won’t check again until morning. Think of the fun we’re going to have before then.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  Marcus ended the call to his colleague at the station and thought of the last words he had said. And bring bolt cutters. He’s been handcuffed.

  The urine soaked into the carpet had seeped through the knees of his trousers. By the smell of him, Dane had been there for hours, festering in his own waste and blood, with sweat growing cold on his skin. Marcus focused on the man’s face: behind the mask of puffy, broken skin, Dane looked terrified.

  ‘You’re going to be okay, Dane. My colleagues will be here soon to get you out of
these cuffs. Who did this to you?’

  ‘She’s crazy,’ Dane said, sounding like he was talking around a mouthful of dislodged teeth. ‘She’s going to …’

  ‘What? What is she going to do, Dane? Who did this?’

  ‘Josie,’ he replied through gritted teeth. A tear plummeted to his jaw. ‘She’s …’

  ‘She’s gone now. You’re safe. We’ll find her.’ Marcus felt sick with guilt. They had suspected Dane when they should have been protecting him.

  He felt for Dane’s pulse at his wrist. His heart was racing sporadically. Shock was taking over.

  ‘Naomi …’ Dane said, his voice fading. ‘Save Naomi.’

  Marcus held Dane’s head up as it lolled against the radiator. ‘What’s going to happen to Naomi?’ he asked. ‘Dane … what’s going to happen to Naomi?’

  ‘Josie …’ The words sounded difficult to muster, as though each letter cost him seconds of consciousness. ‘She will hurt Naomi.’

  ‘Did she tell you this?’

  Dane swallowed loudly. He nodded so briefly that Marcus had to ask him again to be sure.

  ‘Yes.’

  Marcus snatched up his phone with his free hand and called Billy.

  ‘Is Naomi safe? Did you check on her?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s all right. She was asleep, we woke her up.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Damn it, Billy. I asked how long ago.’

  ‘Half an hour or less. She’s gone back to bed.’

  ‘And no one else was in the house with her?’

  ‘Well we didn’t search it, we just spoke to her at the door.’

  ‘But did you get the impression that there was anyone else inside?’

  ‘No, she was alone. What’s going on?’

  ‘Dane Hannah has been assaulted and handcuffed to a radiator in his flat. There’s an ambulance on its way. Josie Callaghan did this.’

  ‘Do you need us there?’

  ‘No, I need you to protect Naomi. Dane said Josie is looking to hurt Naomi, so keep an eye out for her.’