Vanishing Point

by J G Alva

  On the drive to Fin’s place, the younger man asked, “what did you find out at the university? Anything significant?”

  Sutton shook his head.

  “Only that our victim was well-liked by everyone. No confrontations. No enemies. Apparently he was too inoffensive to get on anyone’s nerves.”

  “Well, he upset someone.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s like Diane said,” Fin ruminated. “Too shy. Hush, eye-to-eye.”

  “Please don’t break into song.”

  “I’ve got to do something to lighten the mood. While you were God knows where, I was listening to Diane talk about her finances. Talk about dire. The husband can’t get another job because he’s got something wrong with his knees – I can’t remember the name of it, but they’re basically falling apart. Disintegrating. And she can’t get a job because anything she makes is eaten up with childcare fees. And she doesn’t have anyone to palm the kids off on to.”

  “I know her parents are dead, but what about the husband’s parents? Can’t they help?”

  “There’s only one left. The mother. And she just had a stroke. They owned their own home – the grandparents – but it looks like when they sell it, all of the money will go toward looking after the mother.” Fin shook his head. “I’ll tell you, I was prepared to give all my money to her right there and then. Just transfer it all to her account.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Fin grinned.

  “Because I haven’t got any money to give.”

  “Your parent’s life insurance –“

  “It’s almost gone,” Fin said sadly. “I’ll have to find something to do in the real world pretty soon. A job, I mean. Working in a shop, on the tills. Or, God forbid, MacDonalds.”

  Sutton was silent for a moment as they drove.

  “You should have told me,” he said quietly.

  “It’s okay. It’s my problem.”

  “No, it’s not,” Sutton said, irritated. “How can I continue to do what I do if I can’t call you up whenever I want? Aren’t we a team?”

  “I don’t know, Sut,” Fin said, with a careful eye on him. “Are we?”

  Sutton knew what he was alluding to. He had been distant…but not without good reason.

  “You don’t have to work in MacDonalds,” he said eventually. “We’ll sort something out.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden –“

  “You are a burden,” Sutton said, amused. “But I can put up with you. Just about.”

  “Hey. Maybe I can mow your lawn?”

  “I don’t have a garden.”

  “Or wash your car?”

  “That’s not the best use of your talents.”

  “If you say so.” Fin crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m too humble to remark upon what talents, if any, I possess.”

  For the first time in a long time, Sutton laughed.

  ◆◆◆

  Fin had a lot of locks on his front door.

  The street at their backs was deserted. In the distance, Sutton could hear the steady drone of traffic. Off to his right, a cat cried out, long and loud. It made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

  “So we have no discernable motive,” Fin said, struggling with each lock in turn. “No potential suspects. And no idea if a crime was even committed.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Fin stopped and turned. His eyebrows rose an inch on his forehead.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Can we just get inside?” Sutton prompted. “What’s taking you so long?”

  “Security,” Fin said. “Don’t mock it. Just lock it. If I owned a security firm, that would be my slogan. Here we go.”

  The last lock disengaged with a satisfying meaty click, and Fin opened the door.

  Inside, it was dark, except for reflected streetlight through the kitchen windows. Fin’s abode was one long finger of connected boxes, with only a bedroom and a bathroom to spoil the symmetry: the bedroom was on the left, just inside the door, and the bathroom was on the right, just off the kitchen.

  Fin spent a moment re-engaging his locks before turning on the lights. He favoured fluorescents. God alone knew why. They sputtered into uneasy life. They made his home feel like a particularly untidy floor of an office block.

  Or part of a prison.

  “So tell me,” Fin said, leading the way.

  Sutton followed.

  “There might be a friend at the university,” he said. “A porter.”

  The floor dropped another foot into the kitchen, and Fin went down the steps into this depression. He turned on still more lights.

  “Porter?”

  Sutton joined him in the kitchen. The window above the sink looked out at ground level into a small sad concrete garden.

  “A maintenance man. Miss Tammers said she’d seen them talking together a couple of times. Apparently, Mr Wilkes is from a bygone age.”

  “What does that mean? Tea?”

  “You got clean cups this time?”

  Fin opened the cupboard over the sink to display cups in neat rows stacked inside.

  “Yep. I had a tidy up.”

  “Then yes, please.”

  Fin got down two cups and filled the kettle.

  Sutton continued.

  “To my mind that means he’s bigoted.”

  “The porter?”

  “Yes. And where there’s bigotry, there’s hatred. So that’s a possible. I’ll need you to find out what you can about him.”

  “Okay.”

  Fin switched the kettle on.

  “Victoria Clapham and Steve Cook,” Sutton said.

  Fin wrinkled his nose.

  “You really think there’s something there?”

  “Depends. What did you find out about them?”

  “I couldn’t find out where Mr Cook works, but I found out some other stuff. He’s twenty one, has a driver’s licence, doesn’t have any points. He doesn’t have a criminal record either. He rents that address on West Park. He is currently studying Social Sciences at Busbar.”

  “Nothing else?”

  Fin shook his head.

  “I couldn’t find out much. The absence was notable, if you get what I mean. No social media pages. Weird. He might be a technophobe. Or a Luddite. But I’ll keep looking.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “She’s also twenty one. No driver’s licence. Her mother was a singer. Not particularly successful. Her father had about two dozen jobs in his lifetime, all manual labour. She’s the first in her family to go to university. She did have a social media page, but it was pretty minimalistic.” Fin shrugged. “They both seem a little too benign to be dangerous.”

  “That was your impression?” Sutton asked.

  Fin shrugged again.

  “I just thought the girl was odd. And a snooty bitch.”

  “Well. I think she might be hiding something. So I’ll want you to dig a little deeper.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  Fin started to walk toward the door at the end of the kitchen.

  Sutton asked, “where are you going?”

  “I’m just getting my laptop. Keep talking. I can still hear you.”

  Fin pulled out his keys and unlocked the door to the Computer Room. He went inside. Sutton could just make out the dim interior. It was much the same as the last time he had seen it: a windowless box filled with the hot smell of hard working computers; against the far wall, six computer screens of various sizes mounted on arms and supports; only two were illuminated, and busy with some errant and indecipherable task; wires trailed from them to a multitude of towers; a high backed comfortable office chair held state in front of them. And each and every wall was covered with some form of paper blu-tacked or cello taped to it: photos, drawings, maps, notes, and a hundred other varieties of documentation.

  “When I was in the university, I bumped into an old friend. He introduced me to the head of Social Scienc
es. A William T Mackenzie.”

  Fin’s voice came back to him, muffled but still audible.

  “Another one you want to check?”

  “Might be an idea.”

  “We’ll be drowning in data,” Fin said, coming out of the computer room and shutting the door behind him. He had a laptop in his hands. “Why him?”

  “I don’t know,” Sutton said. “But ignorance never solved anything.”

  “Alright.” Fin cleared some space on the kitchen table. He opened up the laptop, and pressed the power button. The kettle clicked off, and he returned to the counter to make their drinks. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. My friend mentioned a lot of deaths at the university. More than was normal.”

  Fin turned to him.

  “Murders? I haven’t heard anything.”

  “No. He told me they were accidental. But I’m not convinced. When there’s a statistical anomaly, it’s usually explained by an unseen force. So it might be an idea to look into these deaths too. If you can get the details.”

  “Wow. You’re giving me a lot to do.”

  Sutton smiled.

  “I don’t want you to be bored.”

  “No chance of that. Tea, milk, no sugar, right?”

  “Natures makes it sweet enough.”

  Fin poured the milk, stirred, and then handed the cup to Sutton.

  Sutton took a sip.

  “My friend gave me the name of one of the students that died, the only one he knew about: Tobias Bloch.”

  Fin nodded. He pulled out a chair and sat down in front of the laptop. He logged on, then pulled Masters’ memory stick out of his pocket.

  Sutton said, “and there’s someone else I want you to look at. Unrelated to this.”

  Fin turned to him and frowned.

  “Who?”

  “Detective Inspector Charles Leeman. Otherwise known as Chip.”

  Fin was silent a moment.

  “That was the man you got in the car with this afternoon?”

  “Yes. Just find out what you can about him. I just want to verify what he told me is true.”

  “No problem. Right. Unless there’s anything else, I’m going to see what’s on this memory stick. Is there anything else?”

  “Nope. I think I’m done.”

  “Okay. I’m using my laptop because it’s an isolated system. And it’s not an essential bit of kit. If there’s some malware on here, then it won’t go any further.”

  As Fin plugged in the memory stick to the side of the laptop, Sutton asked, “why? Do you expect there to be malware?”

  “I don’t know,” Fin said honestly. “But if you’re disguising a memory stick to look like a pen, then that would indicate some fishy shenanigans are going on. Okay, here we go. We’re in. We’re –“

  Fin had stopped.

  He sat motionless in front of the laptop.

  “What?” Sutton asked. “What is it?”

  Fin looked at Sutton.

  He shrugged.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing on it.” He shrugged again. “It’s totally empty.”

  ◆◆◆

  The little light on the landing sensor was flashing orange when Sutton climbed the last flight of stairs to his apartment.

  Orange meant movement.

  Someone was waiting outside his door.

  Immediately, he stopped. Had he made much noise as he climbed? He didn’t think so. Caution was a habit with him now, automatic. He paused, waiting. He couldn’t hear anyone. The landing ran to his left, separated by the large concrete structure that housed the lift; his view of the landing was obscured by it. The orange light flashed to indicate continued movement was detected by the sensor. So they were still there.

  Sutton tensed, readying himself for a fight. He didn’t know who it could be, but that didn’t matter.

  His heart pounded in his ears.

  The blood rushed to his head.

  He raced up the last half dozen steps to the landing.

  Lucia whirled around, startled.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sutton shouted, his body crashing from the sudden depletion of adrenaline.

  “What?” Lucia said. “What? What is it?”

  “Lucia,” he said, breathing hard. “Don’t you ever call before turning up on someone’s doorstep?”

  “It was to be surprise.” She was wearing a long white coat that almost reached her ankles. He noticed she was pouting. “I have been waiting forty minutes, Sutton. Forty minutes. I am so cold.”

  Sutton frowned.

  “It’s not cold. Why are you cold?”

  She stared at him, her eyes narrowed…and then she opened up her coat.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  She was wearing absolutely nothing underneath.

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 10

  Saturday, 4th June

  Sutton was jogging.

  It was mid-morning, and the sun was out, but a low mist hung over the Floating Harbour, keeping the temperature down; perfect weather for jogging. The harbourside was spacious, with a wide promenade. Plenty of room for joggers to go about their thing without running into pedestrians. On the weekends there were usually a lot, and Sutton recognised familiar faces, and nodded to them in greeting. Not that he had seen them in a while. Now, ghostly figures came and went in the mist, and he couldn’t see enough details of any of them to recognise who they were. Just colourful jackets, or bright tracksuit bottoms, disembodied, and animated, as if by magic.

  Benches lined the water every ten feet, and halfway around his usual circuit Sutton had to stop and sit at one while he caught his breath. Out of shape. Too many late nights, too much alcohol. He was paying the price.

  He looked out over the transformed course of the River Avon, at the barely discernable face of Hotwells across the water, and had a rare moment of wonder. How had he gotten here? How had he been so fortunate? He was exactly where he wanted to be – if not as fit as he’d like – and he found it hard to believe that it had worked out this way.

  Had Chris Masters ever felt anything like this?

  At first glance, his life didn’t seem particularly exciting, but there was no rulebook on how to wind up contended. All that mattered was that you were happy, and despite his own misgivings, there was nothing to indicate that he hadn’t been happy. He had his comics, he had a small smattering of friends. He might very well have been content with his lot in life.

  And then someone had run him over.

  Sutton rose from the bench and resumed his circuit around the docks. The air was crisp, cold even. It felt good in his lungs. Why had Chris Masters been killed by a car? If indeed it had been intentional. It was a very sloppy method of despatching someone. Very inexact. There were too many variables: the car might break down; there might be too much traffic; if the victim spotted you, and he was fast enough, then he might well be able to get off the road to a place where your car couldn’t follow. All in all, it was one of the worst ways to try and murder someone.

  It did have one advantage though.

  It was a very remote kind of murder.

  There was no passion required, no great exertion, no contact. You just had to push a pedal to the floor, and move the steering wheel left and right a bit.

  Sutton slowed as he neared the end of his circuit. He was almost home. The estate he lived on was sequestered behind a high brick wall, and he had run the length of it; now, he turned into one of the small passages built into the wall, on the final leg of his journey. He was breathing hard, and covered in sweat. But he felt good.

  Three figures at the end of the brick alley appeared through the mist.

  They blocked the width of it, which was about five feet. They were coming toward him. One of them would have to move, in order for him to pass.

  Just in time, he saw the nearest one brandishing a baseball bat, ready to swing it.

  Sutton ducked, and the baseball bat went over his head, hitting the wall with a metallic ding. Alumi
nium bats. They each had one.

  Three figures, in jackets, jeans and balaclavas. Two tall, one short.

  They were there for him.

  The first one swung again, the other way, and Sutton was able to get inside the swing, bringing up his left arm and cutting off the motion at the assailant’s shoulder, while at the same time allowing him the opportunity to put a fist into his opponent’s stomach. Which he did.

  The man grunted, doubled up, and dropped the bat. It clanged loudly on the concrete.

  The shorter one came in with his bat, and meant to bring it down on Sutton’s head. But Sutton twisted away, bringing up his right shoulder, and the bat bounced off his arm, just above the elbow. Fucking hurt, and his whole arm went numb, but it wasn’t serious. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

  The final figure joined the fray, and swung his bat at Sutton from the other side. But it was a narrow passage, and there were too many people in it. Sutton stepped back, avoiding the bat, and the third man’s momentum pulled him forward, into the first assailant. They got tangled up.

  Sutton used the delay to reach down and scoop up the discarded bat. That was better. Much more even.

  There was a moment then, just a slight pause, where they all took stock of the situation…and weighed how much it had changed. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were thinking: Sutton had proven trickier than they had first thought. And now he was armed. Sutton himself was wondering if he should run. There was nobody at his back. He could quite easily make a break for it.

  But he didn’t. He wanted to find out who they were. In fact, it was very important that he found out who they were.

  Then the hesitation was over, and Sutton dove back in.

  He swung the bat at the nearest attacker; unfortunately, it was the dazed first man. The bat went into his side, and he shouted; potential broken ribs. The shorter one took a swing at him; several in fact; he was by far the fastest of the three. Sutton deflected the first swing, but caught the second one above the eye, and he stumbled backward. Blood filled his vision on the right side, and a splitting headache spread its electrified net over his head. Fuck it. Another quick swing by Two, and this time Sutton used his bat to knock it aside; it gave him the opportunity to get his foot up. He kicked high, and Two caught it in the jaw, reeling backward but keeping hold of his bat.