by Jan Swick
"Flat ten, just go knock on, or use the intercom yourself." And that was it, the guy retreated. But he left the door open.
They stepped inside. They heard a door slam. The caretaker's front door. Made sense that he'd live on the ground floor.
In the lift, Matt jabbed the button for floor fourteen then stood back. As the lift rose skyward, he studied a diagram above the operation panel that displayed the flat numbers for each floor. He didn't speak and Lisa was content to wait for him to be ready to do so.
The doors slid open on fourteen and they stepped out. He turned to face her, feeling he should finally explain his theory.
"If my sister's killer had help, then only one thing explains the positioning of the body. And that camera. Someone was watching out for him. If I was watching out for someone committing murder, I'd need to know what the police were thinking. I'd want to watch them discover the body. And I'd want to hear what they said while they're stood over it. Can't plant a listening device at a crime scene. It would be found. Can't set up a watch post nearby because the cops will be knocking on doors. I'd need to be far out of the search area, but still able to listen. Some listening devices can be used very far away. But you need line of sight."
He said no more, didn't need to. She said, "So here we are. How do you want to do this?"
"You mind?" Matt said as he took her handbag. He started searching through it. Came out with an eyeliner pencil and a nail file. "Let's go."
They quickly found the flat they needed. Lowest of the eight flats he had been able to see from a crime scene half a mile away. They would work their way up.
Matt knocked and stepped back and set his feet in a fighter's stance, prepared for something unexpected. The door could be answered by a blind paraplegic octogenarian, or it could be thrown wide by a hammer-wielding hulk with dangerous enemies who ten minutes ago had threatened to send someone round to maim his kids. No lack of caution in the paranoid.
But no one answered. Matt knelt and breathed on the door handle. He then used Lisa's eyeliner and nail file. He scraped the eyeliner across the nail file, creating a fine dust that he blew onto the door handle. Lisa watched. She knew what he was doing, but it was fascinating to see him work.
A hard blow on the handle dispersed most of the dust. What remained created little patterns where the dust had settled on oily bodily fluids. But many hands grabbing that handle over many years had created a mess and finding an intact fingerprint was impossible. Lisa's heart sank.
"Next floor," Matt said.
They located the correct flat on the next floor. The flat directly above the one they'd just visited. Seven from the top.
This time Lisa went to knock, and Matt grabbed her hand. "No, that was a mistake I made last time. We need to find out which flat first. We'll work on how to get in after. I don't want to talk people if we don't have to. The last one was a mistake. I wasn't thinking."
She understood that. And she could see by his face that he was embarrassed by his oversight.
Matt repeated the procedure with the nail file and eyeliner. Again, the residue he was left with was useless. A million smeared prints. They went one floor up. Six from the top. At this next flat, floor sixteen, Matt dusted and blew and all the dust came away, leaving the handle spotless. They were down to five flats remaining, and Lisa was staring to worry. But Matt moved on towards the stairs and the next flat as if he didn't mind this game at all.
Seventeen through twenty offered no joy. Beyond the door on eighteen they heard a man and woman arguing while a child cried. Matt performed his dust trick as if he didn't even hear the occupants and moved on when he got a senseless smear again. Three to go, then two. When they stopped outside the flat on floor twenty-one, the top floor, their last chance, Lisa grabbed Matt's wrist before he could start creating his dust.
"It kinda makes sense to use the top floor," she said. "But I don't want you to...what if this one isn't the one, either?"
He didn't answer. Did his dust thing wordlessly. The residue was useless. Just a smear, a mess. Again. Lisa reached out to put her hand on his shoulder, but he jumped up and moved away. Out the door. Fast. She followed.
She couldn't see him, but his footsteps could be heard below as he thundered down the stairs. The echo of his thumping feet stopped on sixteen, where she found him moving slowly through the open door of the dusted flat. He was holding her shortened eyeliner pencil like a weapon. Obviously he had kicked open the door.
And she understood why he had come back here. This was the flat whose door handle had retained no dust. Wiped clean.
She rushed in behind him. They were in a dim, thin hallway with four doors, three in the walls that were closed and one dead ahead that was ajar. She slapped a hand onto his shoulder.
"Slow down," she whispered.
He shrugged off her hand and stepped further into the hallway. He moved cautiously, obviously wary of the doors ahead. She stepped forward and slapped her palm onto his shoulder again and this time he stopped. He didn't turn to her.
"Stop, Matt. Think first. There could have been a child behind that door. Or a house full of cops."
His shoulders slumped as he realised he'd made another error.
"Careful," she said, and gave him a slight push forward, like a mother with an unsure child. It was her way of saying continue.
He put his ear to each of the closed doors then ignored them. He nudged open the ajar door at the end with an extended leg.
The living room was clean and tidy except for a scattering of children's toys. A large window to the left gave ample light. There was a fake coal fire with plastic coal in it. Above it hung a calendar from a nail. Also on the nail was a note. He quickly read it as he passed, heading for the window. Instructions for someone to expect a boiler repairman tomorrow between ten and six. The sort of note you might leave for a friend who has agreed to pop by and check on your flat while you're on holiday.
The window had a table in front of it. A laptop, some notepads and pens sat there. There was a net curtain over the window. It was a grimy old yellowy colour from age, but otherwise clean, except for a spot right at the bottom, right in the middle. A black smear of dirt.
Matt climbed on the table. He hooked a finger behind the middle of the net curtain wire and pulled it an inch from the wall. Up here the wall was dusty, but a spot behind the middle of the wire was clean. He understood.
He reached down, grabbed the curtain where the black smear was, lifted and tucked the netting behind the wire.
Now there was a triangle of exposed window. Matt knelt on the table and stared out. He saw a school and its sports field down below, a couple of hundred metres away. Beyond the field was a housing estate. He had passed through both on his straight-line journey here. Further still, he could make out the industrial estate where his sister had been found. He ran his eyes slowly over the estate until he found the building and the liquid storage tanks he had had to peer between to see this tower block. From this distance the gap between them seemed paper-thin.
This was it. Someone who knew the occupants of this flat were away on holiday had tucked the net curtain behind the wire and mounted a powerful telescope and listening device on the table…had stared through the window and eavesdropped on detectives half a mile away as they stood over a dead prostitute and tried to work out what happened to her… had then left and relocked the front door and wiped his prints off the handle.
"What now?" Lisa said from behind him. He didn't take his eyes off the view.
He didn't know. He just didn't know. He felt like a man who'd followed footprints to the ocean. There seemed to be no obvious way forward from here, but he didn't want to go back. And even if he went back, there was nothing on the path behind him that offered a fork, a different route.
"Fingerprints," he said, but it sounded lame, desperate. "The..." The what? The toilet handle, which the guy might have used? The fridge door handle, in case he helped himself to a snack while he was here? Light switches? Medicine c
abinet? TV's on button? They couldn't analyse prints anyway. Besides, if the guy had wiped clean the front door handle, then surely he had been as cautious inside the flat.
He looked at the carpet. Footprints? But what did he expect - nice, muddy prints, perfectly preserved? There was nothing. He looked at Lisa. Her face acknowledged the despair he was feeling. She was fearful that he was going to implode, and he felt that way. His long trek, all for nothing.
He again sought the view beyond the window, but he didn't see the industrial estate now. He didn't see London. He saw the world. He was beginning to understand that all the detective skills and luck in the world didn't mean anything. Fairness and justice didn't mean anything. People got away with murder all the time. Decent families got their worlds ripped apart all the time. The people who had ripped Matt's world apart might already be out of reach, a thousand miles away. Untraceable. Untouchable.
"Take a guy. Just some regular guy who one day finds out his wife is sleeping with a famous TV star. The TV star's expensive yacht is moored in the harbour and Heartbroken Husband has to look at it every day on his way to his repetitive, backbreaking job. It burns him up. He wants revenge. Maybe he moans about it to people. At a bus stop. Down the local pub. Does wind of this guy's desires float to a certain pair of ears? Or does one of his friends say, hey, I know a guy who can help? The ball rolls and eventually they make contact with each other, Heartbroken Husband and a man who can solve his problem, if he's willing to give up his life's savings. Heartbroken Husband wants that damned yacht sank. He thinks that will make him feel real good. Problem Solver has the boat sunk. This guy knows his stuff. There are no clues for the police. Revenge is sweet."
Matt was still staring out of the window. He had moved the table so he could stand with his face just inches from the glass. His eyes were on the horizon, but his mind's eye was far beyond, taking in the vast planet out there and the billions of people he would never meet. Amongst the billions was one, just one that he dearly needed to find.
"Some guy gets tricked or robbed by a prostitute, and he wants revenge. Problem Solver again gets wind somehow. Another guy who needs his help. Contact is made. Tricked Punter wants the prostitute dead. So Problem Solver has her killed. This guy knows his stuff. There are no clues for the police. Revenge is sweet."
Matt breathed on the window, rubbed a small hole in the mistiness and peered through, mimicking the view from a telescope. His way of trying to put himself in the shoes and mind of the man he suspected had stood here. A man he now considered equally as culpable as the man who strangled his sister.
"If you want to do a skydive, you don't just grab a parachute and leap out of a plane, right? You get a guy to teach you how to use the rig and tell you when to pull the cord. Now imagine Heartbroken Husband and Tricked Punter don't just want to sit back and watch. They want to do it themselves. If you want to personally sink some guy's expensive boat or kill a prostitute, you find a guy who can pave the way for you. You find a guy who will plan everything, take care of every detail, so that you can do the deed yourself and never get caught for it. That's what this…watchdog does. He distracts harbour security and he arranges for the prostitute to be at a certain place at a certain time. He gives you a lockpick and shows you how to shut off someone's carotid. And when he's set up the perfect crime so that all you have to do is follow some simple instructions, like painting by numbers, he takes up a position overlooking the crime scene watches everything happen, just to make sure he can cover any problems the police may throw up. He has the event recorded so he knows every detail. It's also his safety net. Heartbroken Husband was put firmly in the frame after the police got the video of him sinking the boat. The Watchdog has everything covered. It's his skill."
He turned now to face Lisa.
"The camera covered him on that one, but the camera carried by Tricked Punter is going to be his undoing. One little fragment that got broken off is going to destroy his entire universe. Courtesy of a young woman who knew about that camera and all about what happened in Haiti years before."
His eyes bore no accusation, only desire. A wish to learn from someone who hopefully had the answers. "What do you know about this, Lisa? You were on the hunt the moment you knew about the camera. In five seconds at the library you were looking at the boat sinking story. I know you wanted me to find out for myself, but we're past that now. Tell me."
He had delayed asking for her explanation because he had been rushing along a clue-lined path, as unstoppable as a runaway truck. But they had hit a wall on that path, and that had given him time to stop and think.
Lisa stood up. "I read about your sister's murder, Matt, and I thought about you. And when you sent me that little camera piece, I knew that you were investigating. I expected it. The papers said that the killing was something opportune, unplanned, that she had probably been killed by a man paying her for sex. A burst of anger when something went wrong. I didn't agree. The Zweig-Hofmann camera is a high-tech surveillance piece and requires two people. That reminded me of a similar story. There was no mention of the Zweig-Hofmann camera in the Haiti story, but even so I had the wild thought: what if these two events are connected? That was why I had to come. I didn't want to tell you unless we were face-to-face. And I wanted to help."
Matt nodded and turned back to the window. He rubbed the glass to clean it. He slid the table back into place. Let the net curtain drop back into place. Started to wipe places he thought he'd touched. Cleaning away his presence, just as the Watchdog had done. Lisa watched, waiting.
When he was satisfied he had erased his presence here today, except for the busted door, of course, he faced her again. He rubbed his head. "Cameras," he said. He was nervous. He knew he had one last chance. She watched him carefully.
Suddenly he bolted from the room.
Lisa reached the main hallway just in time to see Matt move away from the lift and through the door to the stairs. Sixteen floors.
He must have pressed the button for the lift, then decided he couldn't wait. The doors slid open just seconds later and she got aboard. Hit the button for the lobby and waited while the lift eased its way down. When the doors opened again, she bolted out and threw open the door to the stairs. No sound of footsteps coming down: he had already beaten her to the ground floor.
She saw that one of the flat doors was open. Wide open. She realised Matt's plan. She rushed to the door and saw Matt in the flat, holding the caretaker by the throat, pushing him hard up against a wall.
"Weeks ago," the caretaker wheezed, his throat constricted. "Weeks."
Lisa grabbed Matt's hand and pried it loose. She pushed him away. "Go, outside, now."
"There's cameras in this building, but he claims they're all broken," Matt moaned.
"I'll have a word with him," Lisa said. She stood in front of the wheezing caretaker. A Barrier between the two men. Matt turned and went.
Lisa left the flat ninety seconds later. She found Matt nearby, pacing back and forth like an angry bull. This had been his last chance, she knew. He saw her and looked at her like someone awaiting a doctor's diagnosis of their loved one's survival chances.
Her face told the story before she could confirm it with words. He closed his eyes.
"The cameras went down on the day your sister was killed, Matt. I'm sorry."
"The Watchdog?"
"I don't know. Maybe. The caretaker claimed some electrical fault. They were down for most of the day."
He looked past her, at the caretaker's door. She grabbed his chin and yanked his gaze into hers.
"No, Matt, he's not involved. Forget it."
"So what now? We're not giving up. No."
"Let's go," Lisa said. "There's no more here for us. We'll work something else out. It's not over."
But hearing that word, over, hit something home hard. She saw it in his eyes, and she felt it herself. It was over. Each clue they'd found so far had hinted at another path forward, always forward. But now there was no path. T
here was no way forward and there was nothing of any use at any point back along the trail.
Over.
"If you were stuck on a desert island, you'd die in a week," Lisa said.
"No, I could spear a fish. Easy."
"And then what, cook it and tear it up with your eyes closed? What if you saw the eyes? Or one eye, mixed in there with a bit of shredded meat?"
He shrugged. "Fish is different, anyway. But I'm a tuna rather than anchovies man."
They were in Lisa's room in a B&B in Haringey, which was only a short jaunt east from Muswell Hill, where Matt's parents lived. Matt was slumped in an armchair. Lisa sat on the bed. She had convinced him that they had to slow this whole hunt thing down, that he wasn't going to nail the killer in one night, if at all. They would take the night off, relax, order a meal, watch some TV, and see what tomorrow brought. Surprisingly, Matt had agreed. For a couple of hours they had chatted about nothing, just catching up. And soon Matt started to perk up. He even smiled a few times. They were ex-lovers alone in a small room, and that was a million miles from dead sisters and killers. But she knew she had to be careful to keep the conversation away from family.
"What I don't get is why people eat burgers," Lisa said. "Ever been near a cow? Covered in shit, stinking. Who first saw that and thought, yum? Horses look better. Why did people complain about horse being in burgers?"
"Horses are loved. Horses deserve better than mincing."
Lisa lifted a chicken leg still hung with meat and .bit into it. She bit hard enough to make the bone produce a cracking noise, and then laughed when she saw the disgust on Matt's face. Big grown man, ex-soldier used to blood and guts, and she had had to debone his meal because bones reminded him that his dinner had once walked around. This funny trait of his had sparked their current conversation.
"If you think I'm kissing that mouth now, think again," Matt said. He looked embarrassed that he had made a flirtatious joke, but she didn't mind. She hadn't come here to rekindle their relationship, but was aware that she wouldn't have made the trip down from Manchester for any of her other friends.