The Shadow Man

by Helen Fields

  ‘I’m aware,’ Connie agreed. ‘But it’s all I have. What I really need is to think about something else for a few hours.’

  ‘Like vodka?’ Baarda smiled.

  ‘Like vodka indeed. Tell me about your name. Where’s Baarda from?’ Connie asked.

  ‘My father was the Dutch ambassador to the United Kingdom. He met my mother when he was posted here. They married and he never left. My mother was a socialite. They made the perfect couple. I had older sisters – twins – three years my senior. When I was thirteen, they went to a party, the house they were in caught fire, and they both died. I’d just started at Eton then, and I didn’t go home for a long time. I was sent to relatives during holidays. My mother never recovered, and my father worked increasingly long days. Eventually, he took a posting in Eastern Europe, and my mother became a shadow of herself. If I went home, which was rare, I was looked after by housekeepers and staff.’

  Connie stared at him.

  ‘You said you wanted to take your mind off the case.’ He tossed back the remains of his drink.

  ‘I can’t imagine losing a sibling at that age. I absolutely adore my big brother. He was the only … wait, did you just tell me that to prove a point?’

  ‘You know a lot about me, I have very little facade. Frankly, I don’t see the point. Intrigue bores me. What’s interesting is how few facts you give people about yourself. I know you’re American, that you can’t see colour, and that you’re good at reading faces, but nothing personal.’

  ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘Why you do your job the way you do.’

  ‘I’m a psychologist. We don’t follow an operating manual.It’s not like police procedure.’ Connie grabbed a small dish of dried wasabi peas from a passing waiter and tossed a few into her mouth.

  ‘I’ve worked with a few psychologists. None of them have ever been caught in the mortuary cuddling a corpse before.’ He swivelled his stool round 90 degrees to watch her profile.

  Connie put her head in her hand, elbow resting on the bar, and met his gaze.

  ‘Dr Lambert told you.’

  ‘She had to report it to someone in case there was ever a query about it. For what it’s worth, I got the impression that she rather admires you.’

  ‘I can only tell you what I told her. It’s about perspectives. The murderer’s, the victim’s. This only works if I allow myself to see and feel what they saw and felt. Broad-brush profiling is like using a baseball bat to pick a lock. The killer’s Caucasian and unlikely to step outside his own racial group. He’s between twenty-five and fifty-five, because that’s what statistical likelihood tells us, plus he needs a house, a car, money. He’s got a home in the Edinburgh area somewhere. That’s too much stalking to have done for someone out of the area. His intellect is within average ranges because he didn’t give himself away and has the ability to adapt and persuade. All of which is a good baseline profile, but where is he? What’s he doing right now? Has he killed Elspeth? If not, what’s he saying to her? What’s he asking her for?’

  ‘You’ve done it again,’ Baarda said, getting up from the stool and slipping his jacket over his shoulders.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You answered a question about you by talking about the case. I’m not sure if you’ve practised until it’s a flawless skill, or if you don’t even realise you’re doing it.’ He deposited a pile of notes on the bar. ‘I think I’ll skip dinner in favour of sleep. See you at the yoga studio.’

  Connie watched him go then raced after him, catching him just as he exited onto the street.

  ‘Baarda, wait.’

  He stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I spend a lot of time soaking up the details of other lives, and I counter that by burying mine.’ She shoved her hands deep in her pockets. ‘For nearly a year of my life, I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t communicate at all, in fact. So now it’s all I do. I find ways to enable people to communicate with me. Even when they’re dead, I guess.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said softly.

  ‘Goodnight, then.’ She shrugged and took a step backwards.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  He walked away, Edinburgh’s streets taking a welcome rain washing after the unusual spell of hot weather. The city lights reflecting on the wet streets reminded her of Boston. Connie went back into the bar. There was at least one more measure of Grey Goose with her name on. There were memories best left alone and questions she didn’t have the answer to yet. Neither was going to allow her to sleep for at least another hour. She could just as well spend her insomnia at the bar as staring at the ceiling from her bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The lights hadn’t come on all day; nor had Fergus appeared. Meggy and Elspeth had huddled in bed, sleeping only fitfully, that first night. In the morning – they knew it was morning only courtesy of Elspeth’s watch – they both finally fell fast asleep, waking in sweaty panic, imagining themselves somewhere terrible and unknown, only for the nightmare to continue.

  Meggy was the first to force herself out of bed.

  ‘We have to pick the lock on the door,’ she said. ‘It’s no good waiting here then trying to fight him. If we can get out into the main house, we stand a much better chance. There’ll be things we can use to hurt him there, hit him with or spray in his eyes or something.’

  Elspeth sat up in bed. The dim lamplight did nothing to reduce the appearance of the overloaded bags beneath her eyes and was unflattering to the sickly white of her skin. Still Meggy thought Elspeth was beautiful. Sweet and kind, and beautiful. It would have been better, of course, to have landed in this situation with a female survival expert like Megan Hine, an Olympic martial arts gold medallist like Kayla Harrison, or world champion powerlifter Manon Bradley. Meggy liked reading about powerful women. There weren’t enough of them in her own life.

  But Elspeth had held her all night, and not minded when she’d cried. When Meggy had woken up screaming, terrified, the sheet wet and reeking beneath their bodies, Elspeth had stroked her hair, and moved her gently to change the sheet. Elspeth, it turned out, had children of her own – a boy and a girl. She was the sort of mother who would never decide that she needed to pursue her own ‘mindfulness needs and soul development’, whatever the hell that was, and dump her kids with a bitchy step-mother and emotionally stunted father.

  ‘Meggy,’ Elspeth said softly. ‘Have you ever picked a lock before? Not that I’m saying you can’t do it, but I just don’t know how we’d even go about trying something like that.’

  ‘Well, no, but we’d need something thin and tough. On TV it’s usually a credit card. Do you have one with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elspeth shrugged. ‘I have no idea what he did with my bag. I don’t have any of my things here.’

  ‘That’s okay, I’ve got another idea.’

  She opened the wardrobe, grabbed a pair of leggings and a top, grateful for a fleeting moment about the lack of light that enabled her to ignore the hideous pinkness, and threw the clothes on. ‘Kitchen.’

  Elspeth followed her with less energy but more curiosity, obliging by plugging in the lamp where needed, as Meggy opened every drawer and cupboard. Nothing useful there.

  ‘Back to the bedroom,’ Meggy ordered, once there ripping open every board game until she held a square aloft. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘It’s been laminated.’

  ‘What is it?’ Elspeth asked.

  ‘Some magic spell card from a fantasy game. Come on, this has to work.’

  They went to the apartment door and positioned the light so they could both see, crowding either side of the door lock as Meggy pushed the card into the slim space and began wiggling it.

  ‘It’s not hard enough. The plastic’s getting all scrunched up at the edges.’ She pulled the card back out and held it to the light.

  ‘It’s a Chubb lock; there’s no way we’ll be able to pick it,’ Elspeth said.

  ‘We just need to try something stronger,’ Meggy declared
. ‘It’ll have to be metal. What is there that’s metal?’

  ‘Breakfast first,’ Elspeth declared. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘That’s it, we can take the microwave apart, get to the workings.’

  ‘You can’t take it apart, it’s set into a cabinet that’s all sealed up. I tried getting the door off, but there are no tools or metal cutlery in here. Every screw is turned so tight you can’t shift it. I broke all of my nails and snapped every plastic knife trying. Even if we did get the microwave apart, we’d never put it back together, and he’d know what we’d done as soon as he came into the kitchen. Plus, we need the microwave. There’s not much here we can use to look after ourselves. If we don’t get out, then losing the microwave will be a disaster.’

  ‘We can heat up some water until it’s boiling hot, hide when he comes in, then throw it in his face. If it burns his eyes, we’ll easily be able to get away. Seriously, it’ll work, we can hold a pan each, wait for him—’

  ‘That’s what the two peepholes in the front door are for,’ Elspeth said quietly. ‘He has rules so you can’t duck down and wait for him. He can see everything. He knocks to announce that he’s coming in. He makes me stand in the bedroom at the far end of the corridor with my back against the wall and my hands on my head before he enters. We attack him and I doubt we’d survive.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Meggy huffed. ‘You get breakfast. I’m not hungry. We might not have much time left, so I’m going to carry on.’

  ‘But we both need the light. You have to come into the kitchen.’

  ‘Nope,’ Meggy grinned. ‘I just realised there’s one in the microwave. Leave the door open when you’re not using it.’

  ‘Clever girl.’

  Meggy grinned. Those words weren’t much. But they were everything.

  She left Elspeth making coffee and made her way into the sitting room. The light coming from the microwave was minimal but it cast the slightest bloom on the hallway walls. Lamp plugged in, she gave the furniture a further inspection. Old and stuffed, with heavy wooden frames.

  She dug her hands into the back of the cushion. A cloud of dust erupted, but the cushion itself didn’t budge, and the rough stitchwork scratched her fingertips. Everything was sewn together. She tried the back of the sofa, then the sides, up and down each edge of the wood frame and the base. Nothing shifted. It was sewn, glued and screwed together so hard it would take a bomb to get it apart. Same with the armchair.

  Throwing herself down onto the sofa, Meggy glared at the ceiling. They needed tools to make weapons. Every bed was firmly fixed to the wall, and the cupboards had been stripped of any wood that might have been movable. Her dad would have known what to do. Not that he was a giant in the DIY world, but there had never been a need to pay anyone to do jobs in the house, whether it was basic plumbing, maintenance, or electrics. She wished the lights were on. Half the problem was that she just couldn’t see enough. Above her, two lamps hung from the ceiling, one at each end of the room. Flowery paper lampshades would cast patterned light onto the ceiling when they were lit – when he decided that they’d earned the right to light.

  Meggy hated him. It had occurred to her to wonder if she were capable of killing him or not as she was falling asleep the night before. The question took only half a second to answer. She didn’t want to die here. She didn’t want to die anywhere aged twelve, but especially not here, in the dark with the stupid pink clothes and the stupid board games, and the stupid painted windows. If it meant securing her escape, what Meggy Russell knew with absolute certainty was that if she needed to, she wouldn’t have a problem with killing Fergus. Maybe even if she didn’t absolutely have to.

  Meggy stood up, staring at the light fitting. The ceiling was uneven. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if the mounting plate was casting a shadow onto the ceiling. Turning her head left then right, she tried to get a better view.

  Dragging the armchair inch by inch across the unhelpful carpet, she stood first on the seat, then on the arm. She was still nowhere near the ceiling. Shifting the chair across even further, she fetched the lamp and moved it as far as she could to the centre of the room. There was only one possible option for reaching the ceiling. Taking a deep breath, Meggy climbed onto the back of the chair, arms out straight either side like a tightrope walker.

  ‘Meggy!’ Elspeth shouted.

  The noise made her turn her head, her upper body following suit. One foot slipped down the chair back and the other ankle collapsed outwards. Torso hitting the chair back as she fell, the air gusting from her lungs, she managed to slow her descent to the floor, Elspeth running to catch her too late.

  ‘Oh my God, are you okay? Did you bang your head?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she panted.

  ‘Can you breathe?’

  Meggy nodded rather than trying to speak again. Her lungs felt like someone had punched her from both the front and the back at once. Elspeth slipped an arm around her shoulders and helped her to sit up.

  ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’

  ‘No time. Sooner or later, he’s coming back.’

  ‘But what were you trying to do? That’s really dangerous. What if you’d been electrocuted?’

  Meggy dusted herself off and stood up, rejecting the offered help.

  ‘I’d rather get electrocuted than wait here for him, wouldn’t you?’

  Elspeth looked at the floor. ‘I just want to survive. I need to make sure I see my children again. I don’t want to make him angry.’

  ‘If he comes in, we’ll say I did this when you were asleep,’ Meggy said. ‘Then he won’t get mad at you.’

  ‘He’s not logical like other adults. You can’t take this on yourself. We have to be careful.’

  ‘We have to be fast,’ Meggy corrected, staring at the chair. ‘If you stand there and hold me, I’m less likely to slip.’

  ‘One last try,’ Elspeth conceded. ‘Then we should put the chair back where he had it, or he’ll know we were up to something.’

  ‘We’ll hear his footsteps on the stairs first though, won’t we? I mean, we’ll have a bit of time.’

  ‘Sometimes. Other times he creeps up here, then shouts at me to stand at the end of the hallway, as if he thinks he’ll catch me doing something I shouldn’t. I don’t know what.’ She shrugged and looked vacant.

  Meggy didn’t like that look She’d seen it at school from a few kids who got bullied all the time. They knew reporting the bullies only made it worse. Their parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t step in. It was … there was a good word for it. She screwed her face up in concentration.

  ‘Resignation,’ she said.

  Elspeth’s face didn’t register the semi-insult. Meggy climbed up again.

  ‘Right, hold my leg and my back.’

  Elspeth stood to the rear of her. Balancing was much easier just with someone else’s touch to give her some boundaries. Making sure she was properly steady before fully extending her body upwards, this time Meggy could see the base plate clearly. One corner of it wasn’t fitted flush against the ceiling. She reached, slid a fingernail under it and tugged, putting her weight through her hand and yanking hard on the plastic fitting above the light bulb.

  Plaster exploded into the air, dust and debris raining down onto them both as the lamp gave way. Meggy wheeled her arms in the air, landing on top of Elspeth, who managed to stay upright by pushing Meggy forward to land in the armchair. The lamp swung dramatically, holding on by its bare wires like a loose tooth on a thread of gum.

  ‘No!’ Elspeth cried, standing up and holding her hands uselessly up towards the light as if she could push it back into the ceiling through sheer force of will. ‘No, no, no. We have to put it back, Meggy. He’ll go crazy. This is bad. It’s really bad.’

  She started to climb onto the chair, when Meggy grabbed the leg of her trousers.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Let me see what’s there.’

  Pretending not to feel terrified would have to do as a substi
tute for actually remaining calm, Meggy decided. It was a mess. The screws that had been holding the plate in the plasterboard had fallen away, and there was no chance of tucking it all back up neatly again. All they could do now was attempt to get out of the flat before he came in.

  Scrambling for the light fitting with Elspeth holding her again, Meggy felt for anything she could remove. She came away with two screws and a thin sheet of metal that acted as a base for the fitting against the ceiling.

  ‘Yes!’ she shouted. ‘I knew it. Come on.’ She grabbed Elspeth’s hand. ‘You bring the lamp.’ Jumping off the armchair, she ran for the front door.

  Pausing, waiting for Elspeth to catch up with her, she forced herself to take a calming breath. Her pulse was so loud in her ears that the sound was warped, a special effect in a sci-fi movie. Rushing would be useless. Calm and careful. Last chance, she reminded herself. They had to be out of time now. Soon, Fergus would be there to role play or fantasise, or however his delusions worked. She wasn’t planning on being there, waiting.

  Stepping forward, she cleaned the sliver of metal on her leggings and willed her hands to stop shaking. Then Elspeth was there, her arms around Meggy’s shoulders. Neither of them dared breathe.

  Inserting the metal adjacent to the lock, Meggy pushed to the right, bending the inserted part between the door and the latch bolt, applying gentle but firm pressure. There was a noise like an envelope sliding through a letter box followed by a miniature but satisfying clunk.

  Elspeth gasped and Meggy cried out. It had been a dream. A stupid thing to occupy herself with. It was never going to work out. Reality wasn’t so kind. She whirled round and threw herself into Meggy’s arms, both of them crying already.

  ‘Ready to go?’ Elspeth whispered. ‘We’ll have to be careful. He could be anywhere out there.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Meggy said. ‘But if we see him, we have to fight. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’ She squeezed Meggy’s hands. ‘Come on. Nearly there.’

  Meggy put her hand on the door handle, Elspeth put hers over the top. Together they pulled.