Cut Out

by Marcia Woolf

  I watched as Dawn hit the play button. A set of lift doors opened, and two men in overalls emerged from it with a wheeled trolley stacked up with three plastic archive boxes like the sort I’d seen in the stationery room at CBIB. They lifted the boxes, and then the trolley, into the back of the van. Instead of shutting the doors, they stood around fidgeting impatiently, waiting for something. In the meantime, the lift doors had closed. After a couple of minutes they reopened. I saw a man in a suit and another guy in shirtsleeves, but wearing a tie, struggle out of the lift with a fourth archive box. They were pushing and sliding it along the floor, like they weren’t used to manual labour and didn’t know how to shift the box any other way. The two in overalls gave each other a look and then strolled over and said something. I spotted then that the guy in shirtsleeves was Lorenzo Gallo. He got back into the lift and the doors closed behind him. As this happened, the other guy stood up and turned round, and I could see it was Simon Leach.

  He pointed over towards his car, and the rear lights flashed. He must have opened the boot. The two guys picked up the fourth archive box (which didn’t look nearly so much of a struggle for them as it had been for Gallo and Leach) and put it into the boot of the Audi. One of them fetched a clipboard, and Leach wrote something on it and handed it back. Then the two guys closed the van doors and it moved out of shot. Leach stayed standing by his car until they’d gone, then he rearranged what looked like a blanket or tarpaulin in the boot: as if he was trying to wedge the box in there in case it moved around. He shut the boot, locked the car, and went back over to the lift. He waited perfectly normally until it arrived, and I suppose returned upstairs to his desk.

  Dawn pushed the STOP PLAY button and swivelled round in her chair to look at me.

  “You can confirm that those two moving the box out of the lift are Lorenzo Gallo and Simon Leach?”

  “Of course. That’s what we said yesterday, wasn’t it? So that’s where the missing archive box went: Simon Leach took it home with him.”

  Dawn pressed her fingers together.

  “What do you think was in the box?”

  “At a guess, I’d say all the documentation relating to Project Alphabet.”

  “Cookie, do you have keys to the office on you?”

  “In my bag. But I don’t think it’s wise to go in there without a warrant. Anyway, it’s not unusual for some of the guys to work over a weekend. If I turn up with the police, they might notice.”

  She smiled.

  “We’ve checked it out with building security. Your friend Duane. He says the place is empty this morning. But,”, she patted her breast pocket, “I do happen to have a warrant about my person, just in case.”

  Talk about a fait accompli.

  When we got to the entrance to CBIB’s offices, Duane was standing self-consciously outside, looking important. He nodded towards the plate glass, indicating it was still safe to go in. Dawn asked him to wait, and he nodded again, but then his radio crackled and a voice asked him to go to the sixteenth floor to check a reported water leak in one of the kitchens. I could see he didn’t want to leave us, but Dawn shrugged and said it was okay, so he went, promising he’d be back as soon as the problem was sorted. I unlocked the door and Dawn followed me. I switched on the lights and they flickered and buzzed into action. It felt strange in there. The heating and aircon were off, creating an atmosphere like a provincial museum; cold, unloved, stale. I led Dawn over to the stationery room and slid the lever across so we could go in. The lights came on automatically and blinked furiously for a few seconds, then settled into a murky yellow miasma. She looked around, and located some opaque plastic archive boxes under a shelf. They were empty, one stacked inside the other, their clip-on lids leaning alongside.

  “Same sort of boxes.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing when she pulled one out and put it in the middle of the floor.

  “Do you think,” she asked, “that is, would you mind seeing if you could get into this box?”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  She fixed her eyes on mine, to be sure that I knew what she was thinking.

  “Could you try?”

  I slipped off my shoes and stepped unwillingly into the box. It was difficult to see how anyone could fit in there: it wasn’t very long, although it was fairly wide and probably deep enough. I sat down and pulled my knees up under my chin.

  “That won’t work: can you try getting onto your side a bit?”

  With Dawn holding the box steady I shifted around until I was half on my left side with my head tucked in, feet bent at an excruciating angle and my right shoulder held as low as I could get it.

  “Great, can you keep that position for few seconds?”

  Before I could speak Dawn had got the lid down and was fastening the clips to hold it in place.

  “Dawn! Shit, don’t shut me in here, I won’t be able to breathe.”

  Then I heard something; the sliding door opening wider and a man’s voice. Nilsson.

  There was a silence for a few seconds, and I froze. Not being able to see anything I wasn’t sure whether it was better for me to be in the box or out of it, although admittedly my choice right at that moment was limited.

  “What’s going on?”

  Nilsson sounded angry but also puzzled. Dawn didn’t speak, and I found myself calculating whether she’d be able to tackle him on her own if it got nasty.

  “Well? Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my offices?”

  Dawn must have shown him her ID, because he said, “Police? Do you have permission to come in here?”

  “I have a warrant.”

  There was a rustle of paper and then Nilsson said, “What are you doing with that box?”

  I cannot begin to say how painful it was, stuck in that plastic coffin, screwed up into a Gordian knot like a magician’s assistant. All that was missing was some lunatic trying to pierce the box with knives, although right at that moment I could have used the ventilation. I didn’t want to move or make a sound in case Dawn decided not to let Nilsson know I was there. Then an awful thought struck me that she could be in on the whole thing and might have got me here under false pretences. I was scared, but also furious at being suckered into a predicament that, some day, I might find funny. But right at that moment, I wasn’t laughing.

  “Mr Nilsson, shall we go into the main office?”

  Oh, Dawn. No. Please don’t leave me here alone in the store room stuck in this fucking box. This is what happened to Susie, isn’t it? Poor old Dillon. She must have been about the same size as me, otherwise Dawn would never have thought of it. The question was, was Dillon already dead when she ended up in the crate, or was she just left in there – in here – to suffocate?

  I heard footsteps on the hard floor of the store room as Dawn and Nilsson went into the main office. Then, and I can hardly believe this, one of them closed the sliding door and left me there, on my own, incarcerated in a plastic carton like a KFC takeaway. I was just wondering whether I should yell, when the motion sensor did its thing and turned the lights out.

  I waited. It was agonizing. My right foot had gone dead, so I wiggled it as much as I could, which started pins and needles. It was also very hot in the box, and I tried to remember how much oxygen a person needed before they succumbed to unconsciousness. I raised my shoulder against the lid of the box to see if it would flex and allow a little air inside, but Dawn seemed to have done up all four clips and it wasn’t going to yield. Come on, Dawn, what the hell are you doing out there?

  I wondered if she’d actually told anybody where we were going when we left the station. Then I remembered Duane. Duane would ask where I was, surely? As soon as he’d sorted out the sixteenth-floor leak, he’d come down to see what was happening. Of course he would. A little trickle of perspiration ran down my neck into my cleavage. It tickled but I couldn’t do anything about it. I waited some more. This was getting ridiculous.

  After a while, the best and possibl
y the only plan for getting out of the box began to form in my mind. If I could rock from side to side and get up some momentum, the whole thing would tip onto its side and the lid would snap off. Probably. The other possibility was that I’d end up lying on my back with the lid underneath me and the crate on top, and that was a far, far worse position to be in because the top was wider than the base: it would be virtually impossible to turn. Never, ever, as long as I lived – assuming that was more than the next half-hour – would I go along with any future proposal that involved getting into a box. Especially not a box with a lid.

  Eventually, I decided that if I didn’t have a go at escaping I was going to expire anyway, so it was better to try the rocking and tipping experiment than just to, well, curl up and die. I leaned forward as far as I could, which really wasn’t far, and then pushed backwards as hard and fast as possible. The crate moved about half a centimetre sideways. I tried again and the same thing happened. Then it occurred to me that if I kept it up I could probably move towards the wall and wedge the box against it. How that might be of assistance was a moot point. I tried to visualise a way of levering the lid against the wall, but if it didn’t work, I’d have to somehow get it away from the wall again – and that would be very annoying indeed.

  Of course, I had no idea how long I’d been in the damn box. It felt like hours, but realistically I knew it couldn’t be more than twenty minutes.

  Finally, I was so angry that another go at the rocking and tipping method seemed a good idea, so I threw myself back and forth as vigorously as I could, trying to imagine being on a swing and propelling myself upwards away from the ground, again and again and again. I couldn’t stop to work out what the box was doing: it was doing something, and that felt like progress. My back struck a hard object: there was an almighty thud and a hail of what felt like bricks came down from above, striking the box and clattering all over the concrete floor. The motion sensor, detecting movement, turned the lights back on. Unfortunately, I was still stuck in the box. Then I heard the store room door slide open, a familiar voice, and a chuckle.

  “What are you doing in there, Pandora?”

  It was Ollie Sullivan.

  “Get me out of here!” I demanded, “Right now.”

  He lifted some of the fallen objects off the lid of the box and undid the clasps. He was actually laughing at me.

  “How dare you! Help me out of here. It’s not funny.”

  He carried on laughing.

  “I could have died in there, you arsehole!”

  He laughed even harder at that; so hard that he dropped the lid and had to lean against the shelf to draw breath. I noticed he was wearing latex gloves. I clambered out. Talk about undignified. I pulled my clothes back into place and retrieved my shoes. He calmed down and tried to keep a straight face.

  “Ollie, what are you doing here anyway? Where’s Dawn? Where’s Nilsson?”

  “Dawn’s taking him to the station to answer a few questions.”

  “Oh, that was nice of her, leaving me stuck in here. I could have died.”

  “So you said. You were only in there ten minutes.”

  I looked up at the wall clock above the reception desk.

  “Seventeen. Seventeen minutes. It felt like a lot longer, I can tell you. Want to try, eh? Do you fancy being stuck in there in the dark? I should file a complaint.”

  He smiled.

  “Please don’t do that. I’ll take you home.” He poked his toe against one of the perspex blocks on the floor. “What are these things anyway? Some sort of awards?”

  “Trophies. When a private equity firm closes a deal, everybody who’s worked on it gets one: look, they’ve got the project name on and the date it closed. You know what they call them? Tombstones.”

  He stared at me.

  “Tombstones? Really?”

  I went to pick one up from the floor but Ollie stopped me.

  “Leave it. Come on, I want to seal off this room. We need to get forensics in.”

  He took hold of my arm to steer me towards the door. I turned round and surveyed the mess I’d caused with my attempted escape.

  “You think this is where she was killed?”

  He slid the door across behind us. He didn’t reply, but I suppose it was a question that didn’t require an answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sunday 30th November/Monday 1st December

  DNA

  Sullivan drove me home. He pulled up outside and kept the engine running. I got the message, but I had to ask anyway.

  “You want to come in? Just for a drink?”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He laughed.

  “I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll ring you tomorrow, okay?”

  I watched as the car turned the corner and then went up to wait for Jack’s Sunday call. He was his usual jolly self. Mainly I talked and he listened, although I didn’t tell him about my recent stint as a failed escapologist. I’m sure he’d have found it hilarious, but explaining how I got into the box in the first place would have taken considerably longer than the allotted fifteen minutes. Towards the end of the call he asked if I’d found out anything else about my real father.

  “No. I haven’t been trying.”

  There was a silence at the end of the line.

  “Jack? I’m sorry – were you expecting me to do something?”

  “I thought you wanted to find out. What about the DNA test?”

  I winced. Since I’d handed over Jack’s baby tooth Ollie hadn’t said any more, and it hadn’t been top of my list of priorities. Maybe the lab results hadn’t come through yet.

  “Yes, we’ll have to organise it. I’ll find out what the procedure is.”

  Jack snorted, like I’d said something stupid.

  “Just get Clive to deal with it.”

  “He’s a financial manager, Jack, not a doctor.”

  “So? He’ll know who to talk to. Someone who can visit me here to take the swab. Get the best, go private. Someone who knows what they’re doing and can keep their mouth shut.”

  Jack’s answer to everything. I sighed. No point in arguing.

  “Okay, I’ll get onto it in the morning. Any more jobs you want me to do?”

  He made a little huffy noise.

  “Time’s nearly up, Jack. Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

  “I love you.”

  Well, that took the wind out of my sails.

  “Yeah, I know. I love you too.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Goodnight. I meant, goodnight. Take care, Cookie. I worry about you out there.”

  I smiled to myself. I was thinking about the archive box.

  “Don’t worry sweetheart. I won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Good,” he said, again. Then he hung up.

  It was a slow evening. I was still a bit jittery after events earlier in the day, and Jack’s call hadn’t put my mind at rest. I wandered aimlessly round the flat looking for something to do. There was nothing on TV worth watching and I couldn’t relax enough to read. I tried lying on the sofa in front of the fake fire, listening to music, but my thoughts kept going round in circles. To be honest, I was still pretty angry with myself for fucking up the situation with Ollie. I’d underestimated him, and that wasn’t like me. Then I drifted onto the DNA test. It was weird that the results were taking so long to arrive. Ollie said he’d fast-track things through the police lab, so I’d assumed it would only be a couple of days. How long had it been now? Four days. I was being ridiculous. Patience, woman. Over thirty years, you’ve been totally oblivious, and now you expect an answer in forty-eight hours? Still, I decided I’d call Ollie in the morning to see if there was any progress. Maybe he’d just forgotten about it. I imagined Jack’s baby tooth in its little silver box rattling around in Ollie’s glove compartment or stuck in a corner of his coat pocket accumulating fluff
. Ollie better not have lost it. A lot was riding on that pre-molar.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware of was the phone. I sat up and looked at my watch. Not Jack, calling at eleven-fifteen.

  “Garrity residence.”

  “Cookie. It’s Dirk.”

  “Dirk! What on earth are you – where are you?”

  He laughed.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  I stood up and caught sight of myself in the mirror. Hair all over the place, smeared eyeliner, creased shirt. Not a good look: sort of Debbie Harry in a care home.

  “I’m sorry to call so late. Just got to the hotel. I’m in London.”

  “In London? Really? I thought you weren’t due back here for ages.”

  “Something came up. Anyway, I have a surprise for you. So I wonder if we could meet up tomorrow, if you’re not working?”

  For a second or two I struggled to remember what day it was.

  “I’m supposed to be at work, but…”

  “But you can take the day off?”

  I thought about it. After the archive box performance and Nilsson’s visit to the police station, it was probably best I handed in my notice with immediate effect.

  “I’m sure it can be arranged. You want to do lunch?”

  “Can we meet at your place?”

  “If you want. There’s a good place to eat just around the corner.”

  “I’ll be there just after ten thirty.”

  “That’s an early lunch.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, I want to spend some time with you.”

  “How lovely. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  I sat down again and stared at the fire. Something was most definitely up. Dirk had done his best to sound normal, but I’d detected a tension in his voice. And the fact that he didn’t want to meet in a public place made me think that whatever he had to say was going to be something I didn’t want to hear. But then, he’d said he had a surprise for me. A surprise, not a shock. I made myself a snack and went to bed with a book. It wasn’t long before the lines began to blur, and I closed my eyes.