by Helen Fields
‘That’s what Elspeth’s for. She’s already agreed to help. You don’t need to worry. How do you see people in black and white? Do they all look more alike? Is it harder to recognise faces?’
Connie scribbled notes as she thought about it.
‘It’s more of a challenge with younger people. I’m from the East Coast of America. On any one of our beaches in the summer, you could see literally hundreds of sixteen-year-old girls, all fairly skinny, wearing cut-off jeans and skimpy tees, long, straight hair, clear skin. Then it’s hard. Among older people, it’s easier. We have more facial anomalies as we age.’
‘Not everyone ages,’ he said.
‘That’s true. Do you mind if I ask why you took Xavier?’
‘The world you inhabit is not the same as everyone else’s. Mine is even less so. Xavier’s necessary. I wouldn’t do anything unless I really needed to. I have to pass this time. I thought you got it.’
‘I think I do. Certainly I understood that Angela was a mistake. What do you mean pass? Are you facing some sort of test?’
Lots of background noise, she wrote for Baarda. He’s somewhere busy.
‘I grieve for Angela,’ he said. ‘She was angelic. Everything a mother should be. I never once saw her …’ He broke off.
‘Hello?’ Connie asked. ‘Is everything okay?’
No response.
Line still open, Connie wrote.
Baarda was busy demanding answers on his own phone from MIT’s technical team, who were listening in.
‘You were saying you never saw Angela do something. What was that?’
‘Lying bitch!’ he yelled.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help—’
‘He’s got a photo of Elspeth naked in the shower!’
Connie flipped open her laptop and thrust it at Baarda. Someone talking about Elspeth. TV/online? she scribbled.
Baarda began tapping away furiously at the keys.
‘Photos can be manipulated. It’s impossible to know if what you’re seeing these days is real. Please don’t—’
‘Shut up!’ he ordered. ‘He’s speaking.’
Connie could hear a different voice in the background, familiar, but she couldn’t place it immediately. A second later, it was joined by her own laptop streaming a feed of a video that had obviously gone viral given the way the numbers beneath the video were hopping up by hundreds every few seconds.
‘I knew Elspeth for quite a while,’ Nick Bowlzer was saying into his laptop camera. ‘The real her. Not the fake version you see in all the photos or at those posh dinners. Bethy – that’s what she liked me to call her – wasn’t really like that. I really thought we were …’ He paused for dramatic effect and wiped a sleeve over his eyes, ‘Soul mates. I know she was married, and I’m making this video partly to say how sorry I am to her husband.’
Fuck! Connie scribbled on her notepad.
‘But also so the world gets to know Bethy better. It’s important to me that everyone can see how human and fragile she was. Flawed like every one of us. The truth is, we both fought it, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.’
‘She was supposed to be pure!’ Elspeth’s captor howled. ‘I knew she could never be as perfect as Angela, but this … she’s a whore! Did you know about this?’ His panting into the phone was furious.
‘The man talking just wants his five minutes of fame. He might not even know Elspeth …’
‘She has a birthmark! I’ve seen it. It’s in the photo. And I saw her with him once, after her yoga class. Are you lying to me now as well?’
‘Whether he knows her or not, it doesn’t mean Elspeth did the things he’s saying,’ Connie soothed. She paused the video then rewound to the start where Nick Bowlzer had split his screen and was displaying a photo of Elspeth in the shower – a few body parts blurred with a crude editing tool, but enough on show to prove his point.
‘I think she knows him really bloody well,’ he growled. ‘She misled me. Elspeth’s my wife! You don’t think she ought to have told me about this? You think I’d have chosen her if I’d known?’
‘People make mistakes …’
‘Fucking right,’ he said. ‘Elspeth just made one she’ll regret forever.’
The line went dead.
‘He’s going to kill her,’ Connie said. ‘Get that fucking attention-seeking prick off the air right now. Do whatever you have to do to get that video off every server.’
‘Impossible. It’ll have been downloaded by now.’
‘Shit!’ Connie shouted. She scrolled forward to the end of the video, where Nick Bowlzer had his name, email address and social media tags displayed across the bottom of the screen. ‘That little son of a bitch is doing this to get media likes, not to mention the money he’ll be demanding to give a kiss-and-tell story to the gutter press.’
‘We have to focus on what we’ve got. Did he say anything that might help? A name? An idea of what he’s doing with his hostages?’ Baarda asked.
‘Nothing. Did MIT manage to trace the call?’
‘No, the number was from a burner mobile, and the call wasn’t long enough to triangulate. He’s in Edinburgh city limits somewhere. That’s the best they could do. At least we have his voice now. If we pick him up, we’ll be able to confirm his identity immediately.’
‘No voice changer,’ Connie said. ‘No speech impediment. I’d put him in his thirties, which fits the previous descriptions of him.’
‘He was angry this time, though. At the sports centre, when he killed Danny, the witness said it was as if he was on autopilot, like he felt nothing at all when he used the knife. This is his trigger. So what do we know?’
‘He wouldn’t have made that call from his home address,’ Connie said. ‘He’s delusional but still functioning. We need officers on the street looking for someone driving badly. He’s lost control, and he’ll be trying to make his way back to Elspeth as fast as possible. If he’s on foot or on public transport, he’ll be visibly agitated, possibly confrontational. In this state, he poses an immediate threat to anyone who approaches him. We need an all-agencies alert, contain but do not approach. Assume he’s armed.’
‘I’m putting the alert out now. Anything else?’ Baarda asked.
‘I need to review that call somewhere quiet so I can really listen to his voice and see what I can get from his language. Let’s go up to my room, and don’t waste any more units here. Get them out on patrol. We’re safe, but thanks to Nick fucking Bowlzer, Elspeth is most definitely not.’
Chapter Thirty
‘We have to barricade the door first,’ Xavier said. ‘If he walks in on us when you’re dangling from the ceiling, Elspeth, we’re all dead.’
‘There’s no time,’ Elspeth complained.
‘We’ll make time. It’s too dangerous any other way. I’ll be tied to you and unable to protect Meggy. Just run that scenario through your head for a moment.’
‘That’s fine, but what do you suggest we use? Almost everything in the flat is bolted to walls or to the floor. The sofa’s too big for us to get through the doorway – it must have been put together in here – and we have no tools.’
‘There are three mattresses – that’s a start. Use mine and Meggy’s first as they’re singles, then you’ll have to bend yours as much as you can. Lean them against the door. Add all the other items from cupboards you can. Toys, clothes, pots and pans. Anything not pinned down. It may not hold him for long, but it’ll make it hard to get in quickly.’
Meggy and Elspeth got to work, with Xavier issuing directions from the lounge. The double mattress was hardest to move, bulky with old-fashioned springs that complained as they shifted it. Shoving it as hard as they could against the door, they flung everything else into a pile.
‘Well, now we have to escape,’ Meggy said. ‘We can’t put that lot back.’
‘I like it better like this,’ Elspeth said. ‘It feels more homely.’
At the base of th
e hole in the floor, the plasterboard was proving strong and unyielding, the close-set rafters added to its strength. By the time Xavier had concluded that Elspeth would need to jump up and down to break through, he’d also had time to think about the height of the ceiling in their own flat. If that was matched in the room beneath, then Elspeth was looking at a drop of perhaps fifteen feet. Without a means of controlling that fall, she’d be lucky to escape with just a broken ankle or two, and that was if she went straight down. More likely, she would slam her head into one of the rafters on the way, risking damage to her head and neck.
Fifteen minutes later of time they could barely afford, and they’d tied three sheets together and wrapped them around Elspeth’s chest beneath her arms, securing the loose end with the armchair as an anchor.
‘Ready?’ Xavier asked.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Elspeth said.
She jumped as high as she could given the constraints of the hole in the floor and gripped her arms tight by her sides over the sheet-rope.
A soft crunch followed, the equivalent of biting into crisps when the packet has been left unsealed for a week. Still an identifiable crackle, but the sound was soft around the edges. Elspeth’s head flew upwards as her feet passed through the plasterboard. Xavier grabbed for the sheet, to add his own weight to the counterbalance of the chair. Meggy reached out as Elspeth tipped to one side, the plasterboard choosing that moment to break unevenly, the area beneath Elspeth’s right foot giving way before the left, leaving her lurching into the edge of the cavity as she plummeted.
Meggy got her hand between Elspeth’s head and the jagged edge of a broken floorboard, and howled as Elspeth’s head bounced off the back of her hand, forcing her palm into the splintered wood. Too late, Elspeth reached one arm upwards to try to grab on to the remaining floorboards to prevent the fall. One arm down, one arm in the air, the sheet pulled, noose-like, around her left breast and the outside of her upturned shoulder.
The armchair spun in place, knocking Xavier from his position and pushing him into Meggy, crushing her hand further into the ragged protrusions of ageing wood. The girl cried out. Xavier did his best to clutch the slippery sheet, but the knot wouldn’t hold. Elspeth slipped away into the room below, with barely time to scream.
‘Elspeth!’ Xavier shouted.
The last of the sheet had slipped silkily through his hands and landed in a spiral on top of her unmoving body like a gymnast’s ribbon.
‘Don’t let her be dead,’ Meggy was chanting. ‘Please, please, please, don’t let her be dead.’
‘She’s not dead,’ Xavier told her. ‘It’s not a big enough drop for that. We just need to give her a moment. She’s had a shock, and she may have bumped her head. Try to stay calm.’
‘You stay calm!’ Meggy shouted. ‘You only just got here. I can’t do this without her.’
‘Meggy, stop!’ Xavier commanded. ‘That won’t help us now.’
There was a low groan from the floor below. Xavier and Meggy shoved their heads as low into the hole as was safe.
‘Elspeth!’ Meggy shouted. ‘Wake up. You have to get up.’
Face down, her right arm above her head and across the back of her head at an alarming angle, Elspeth’s feet twitched, then her left leg jerked.
When she began to scream, it was as if the entire house was echoing her pain. The noise bounced off the walls around her and the fractured ceiling above. She tried to roll over and ended up flopping back onto her belly, kicking her feet into the floor. Her right arm floated horribly, uselessly, above her head, her fingers frantically grabbing thin air.
‘Elspeth,’ Xavier shouted. ‘Listen to me. You’ve dislocated your shoulder. You’re going to have to get it back in.’
She was crying, helpless with the pain.
‘Meggy, you’re going to have to get down there. I’m too heavy for you to lower me, but I should be able to get you down. I need you to fetch all the bedding.’
Meggy was sprinting to help before he’d finished speaking. She dumped a pile of sheets and pillows in Xavier’s lap.
‘Come on, then,’ she said.
Xavier shoved three pillows through the hole and onto the floor below to give Meggy a chance at a softer landing, then tied a blanket and a sheet together, one end around her waist.
‘Same as with Elspeth, only she had three sheets. You’ll have to drop the last bit. It’s important to remember to keep your ankles and knees soft, drop to your side, let yourself collapse and roll. Don’t try to fight it. Say it back to me.’
‘I’m not a baby,’ she groaned.
‘Say it back,’ he insisted.
‘Land soft, let myself roll, knees and ankles, blah-blah-blah.’
‘That’ll have to do. When you’re down, I’ll talk you through how to help Elspeth. Did he give you any medicine for emergencies, paracetamol maybe?’
‘Don’t think so. Elspeth didn’t say.’ She looked over the edge of the hole to where Elspeth was now lying on her back and groaning, eyes still shut.
‘Okay. That’ll be the priority when we get downstairs. I’m going to tie the other end onto my waist, and I’ll hang on to the chair. When you’re as low as I can get you, I’ll warn you and you’ll have to brace to drop. Got it?’
‘Hurry up, then,’ she said.
‘Just hold on to the sheet above your head, so if the knot slips—’
‘Ugh,’ Meggy sighed, putting her feet into the cavity and taking a firm hold of the bedding rope before pushing away from the edge.
Xavier gripped the chair with one arm and held tight to the knot around his waist with his free hand, wishing harder than he ever had before that his legs still worked, unable to brace and hold the girl’s weight with his whole body. More importantly, unable to fight their captor.
It was hard work with the clumsy makeshift rope and the limitations of his movement, but he found he could cut himself some slack with his left hand, rebalance, then allow the rope to feed through his other hand and run a decent rhythm. It was slow going, but the would-be rope was holding.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes, go faster!’ Meggy shouted back.
‘Got to take it steady,’ he said. ‘Be patient. How high above the floor do you think you are?’
‘I don’t know … maybe, like, three of me. It doesn’t make any difference anyway, just let the sheet thingy out. Her arm looks all funny, and her breathing’s weird, like she’s sucking through a straw.’
‘Shit,’ Xavier muttered under his breath.
He tried to let out another half a foot of sheet and heard a ripping.
‘Meggy, look up. Can you see where the sheet is going through the cavity?’
‘Too dark,’ she said.
The tiny scream was a knife in his heart. The sheet suddenly gave a few inches then stopped dramatically. He felt the movement of Meggy swinging in mid-air at the end of the length of material and grabbed frantically at the fabric that was still intact in his grasp.
‘Stay still!’ he ordered. ‘It must be snagged somewhere on the rafter.’
‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ the girl muttered. ‘Oh, gross, the ceiling is covered in brown stains and it stinks in here.’
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Xavier told her, tying off the end he’d been holding around his waist, hoping the chair was heavy enough to balance the girl’s weight, then using his hands to pull himself across the floor to the cavity. He knew perfectly well what the stains on the ceiling were. Their cause was the same as the smell Meggy was complaining about. Decomposing bodies leaked fluid, and the plasterboard would have soaked it up like a sponge.
At the opening, he lowered himself to lie on his chest, jamming one arm across the other side to hold on tight, then leaning in to unhook the sheet.
Meggy’s problem was apparent straight away. A careless carpenter sometime in the previous hundred years had been sloppy with a nail, which had been left sticking from a section of wooden beam. The sheet’s tension had
helped the nail to pierce the weave of the cotton, and the puncture had become a rip. Now, with every inch that he allowed Meggy to drop, the material was splitting further, and that meant it was weakening.
‘Holy shit,’ Meggy said.
‘It’s okay. I’m going to reach in and unhook the sheet, just—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not that. Look at the walls.’
He glanced down into the room. In spite of the limited view and the lack of natural light, he could see enough to catch the psychedelic patterning of the walls.
‘What the hell is that? Wallpaper?’
‘Photos,’ she said. Her voice cracked. ‘So many that it looks like wallpaper. Only creepy. Really creepy bloody wallpaper.’
There was a sudden cough and the sound of a wet wheezing from the floor below.
‘Right, I’m reaching in to free up the cloth. Don’t be scared if it slips a bit.’
‘This isn’t normal,’ Meggy continued. ‘Some of these photos are really old. And I think he’s scribbled on some of them. Crossed the faces out. There are layers of them. New photos stuck over old ones.’
‘We can’t do this now, Meggy. Elspeth needs you. We have to concentrate.’
‘But it’s the whole room. And I think … I see photos of me. Lots of them. Like maybe hundreds. How long has he been watching us?’
Ice flushed through Xavier’s veins. His fingers were suddenly giant sausages working against his will, and the old pain was back in his legs where he’d had no sensation for years. Nausea coated his tongue and threatened to overwhelm him. He tried to block out Meggy’s words as he worked on the sheet.
‘They’re in sections. I’m only on one wall, but there are photos of other girls there, too.’
The end of the sheet in his hand suddenly twisted dramatically.
‘Meggy, whatever you’re doing, stop. You have to stay still. This won’t hold your weight if you move around.’
‘No, I need to see another wall,’ she insisted.