by S. B. Caves
It was the most her mother had said in a very long time. Had she been waiting for Emily to poke the elephant in the room after all these years?
Emily sighed, looked down at her lap, her hair hanging across her face. ‘I used to have these horrible dreams about it. At first it was every night, and I would wake up just… bawling in my sleep because they would seem too real. I used to think she was’ – Emily paused, bit down hard on her bottom lip, swallowed a sob that threatened to make its way up her throat – ‘I used to think she was angry with me, because I was still alive. Like it should have been me that died. So I had to train myself to stop thinking about, because if I didn’t, I knew it would drive me—’
‘Crazy?’ her mother finished for her. ‘Yes. I know the feeling.’ She chipped off a piece of custard cream and crumbled it between her fingers. Fine yellow dust flittered to the carpet.
‘In a way,’ Emily began hesitantly, ‘I think it might be worse for Jack. He saw who did it. I can’t imagine what that would be like, walking around, always looking for that face. The torment…’
Her mother crushed the biscuit in her hand and ground it up. ‘That’s the only thing keeping me going,’ she said as chunks of custard cream cascaded from her clenched fist. ‘I’d be in my grave now if it wasn’t for the hope that one day Jack somehow sees him again. But I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen, and anyway’ – her birdlike shoulders shrugged – ‘I think I’m about ready to be planted.’
‘Don’t say that, Mum.’ Absently, Emily bent down and began scooping up the shattered pieces of biscuit.
‘Well, it’s true. I think I’ve had enough. The police don’t care about it any more. But I suppose you never know.’
Softly Emily said, ‘Jack probably wouldn’t recognise him today. He could walk straight past him in the street and not even know it.’
‘No,’ Renee shook her head. ‘You would never forget a thing like that, Em. Not as long as you lived.’ She patted Emily’s thigh, gave it a gentle squeeze. It was the most loving gesture she had offered in a very long time. ‘We just have to stay positive, love. Sometimes God answers prayers.’
When she arrived at the station, Emily used her phone to find Frazier Avenue. It was one of the last tower blocks around for miles, standing defiant like a rotten tooth in a mouthful of bleeding gums. They’d knocked all the other estates down and were redeveloping the area, shuttling the council tenants off here, there and everywhere. Frazier Avenue was one of the last of its kind, a lonely relic with only rubble and cranes to keep it company.
Emily didn’t have a game plan. She made her way to the main door and buzzed different buttons, keeping silent until someone got fed up and buzzed her in.
She drifted through the foyer, pressed the call button for the lift and waited.
‘It’s broken,’ a voice said, startling her. It was a young boy, maybe thirteen years old, wheeling a BMX out of the flats.
‘Thanks,’ she replied.
She took the stairs to the eighth floor, pausing at each landing to catch her breath and palm the beads of perspiration away, and then walked through the hallway until she found number 83. This was it. Behind that door was the man who killed her sister.
Or was it? Jack had seemed so unwavering that it was difficult to disbelieve him, and yet there was still a kernel of doubt. Jack could be wrong. If he was, and if they did what he wanted to do, that would make them no better than the piece of shit that knifed Kate.
But what if Jack was right? Could she really help kill another human being, even one as vile and evil as Morley was supposed to be? She reached out and touched his door, could feel the music inside his flat thrumming through her fingers. I just need to see you, she thought. I just need to get a glimpse of you in the flesh to know that this is real.
She withdrew her hand and walked to the end of the hallway, where she still had a good view of Morley’s door.
She would wait for him to leave. All day if she needed to.
She didn’t need to wait long. A short while later, Morley stepped out of the flat, all six-foot-five of him, his back as broad as a barn door. He was speaking to someone on the phone about a ‘pickup’ and then he stopped dead in the hallway, some sixth sense alerting him to her presence. His head turned, slightly tilted, like a wolf scenting a lamb in the air. She began to walk, her heels clicking down the hallway, the rhythm of her stride unsettled by his sudden odd behaviour. He knew something was wrong. She stared fixedly at the gum-stained floor as she walked, glancing up only once. His eyes jumped out at her, reminding her of something from her childhood. When she was little, Kate had bought an astrology magazine because it came with a free packet of glow-in-the-dark stars. Kate stuck them to the ceiling, all around the lampshade, so at night when they went to sleep they could see the luminous constellation.
She saw his expression change as she passed. He had been vaguely suspicious at first, and then it gave way to something else. His eyes narrowed and his lips curled up in the corners. ‘Oi, I’ll call you back,’ he said into the phone, and then, ‘Excuse me, excuse me’ – his insistent voice rolling after her. She knew that she had two choices just then: either bolt down the hallway for the stairs, or turn and face him, act normal. Every muscle in her body flooded with adrenaline, preparing for flight. That was silly, though. She was just a woman in the hallway. He didn’t know her.
But she knew him.
She stopped. As casually as she could, she looked over at him. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Do you need any help? You seem lost,’ he said, continuing to smile, his eyes gleaming slyly.
‘I’m not lost.’
‘Oh? Who are you here to see?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she said curtly, hoping the edge in her voice would repel him. It seemed to have the opposite effect. He trotted on after her, following her into the stairwell. Damn these heels, she thought. If I was wearing flats I could jet down these stairs in no time. If I try anything fancy in these shoes I’m liable to snap my ankle or go tumbling and break my neck.
‘You don’t live in this block,’ he said. It came out like an accusation.
‘So?’
‘So, who are you?’
‘Like I said, none of your business.’ She walked faster, trying to build up a rhythm. She could hear him behind her, could see his shadow stretching over hers on the stairs.
‘It is my business when you’re in my building.’
‘It’s your building, is it? Landlord, are you?’ The quip didn’t come out anywhere near as confident as she’d hoped.
He snorted laughter. ‘You’ve got jokes.’ In her haste, her heel clipped the top of a step and she lost her footing, her hand whipping out for the banister. ‘Careful now. Don’t want to trip.’
‘Can you stop following me?’ she said shakily, her voice reverberating through the stairwell. She didn’t stop, didn’t look at him, just kept all her focus on her feet.
‘Who says I’m following you? The lift’s broken.’
What floor was she on now? She looked through the gap in the stairwell and saw the spiral of stairs on the way down. It had to be another four or five floors at least.
‘I haven’t seen your face round here before. You’re pretty, you know that?’
‘Am I?’ The chipped paint on the stairwell banister scraped into her palm.
‘Yeah, you are. You have a man?’
Don’t answer. Just keep going.
‘You must have a man. Pretty little thing like you can’t be walking around with no man. Does he treat you well?’
‘He does. In fact he’s waiting for me right outside this building. So I’d be careful if I were you.’ The private schooling in her accent was impossible to mask. The sentence came out about as threatening as a feather pillow.
‘Careful of what? I haven’t done anything to you.’
She could hear the smile in his voice.
‘Good. Keep it that way.’
He gave a low
, throaty chuckle. ‘You’re not from this building. And I don’t think you’re visiting anyone from this building. And I don’t think you’re a policewoman. So why would you be hanging around on my floor?’
Panicked, she thought about saying she was from the council but opted out at the last second. That left the door open to too many follow-up questions and he’d see through her in an instant. But she felt like she needed to tell him something, give a reason for being in the building.
‘You have nice hair, you know that?’
‘Thank you,’ she snapped.
‘I can’t see too well through that jacket, but I bet the rest of you is nice too, isn’t it? Course it is, you look like you take good care of yourself.’
She peered down the gap in the stairwell again. Two more floors to go.
As she rounded the corner, she felt the toe of his trainer press down on the back of her shoe. Her foot came loose and she almost buckled forward down the concrete steps. An involuntary scream leapt out of her mouth and sent a jagged echo through the stairwell.
‘Sorry,’ he said insincerely. ‘I have big feet. You know what they say about men with big feet?’
A runaway thought rocketed through her mind just then. Should she just kick her shoes off and sprint out in her bare feet? She’d get further if she did, and maybe he’d find it funny, so funny that he’d let her go.
She took the last set of stairs and zoned in on the door that would lead her outside. If she could get that door open then she could run outside and scream, tell him to back off and leave her the fuck alone; but in the stairwell she was like a fly in a web. This was his lair.
She could hear him wheezing, the descent taking its toll on him. ‘It’s true what they say, you know. Big feet.’
She scurried to the ground-floor door, grabbed the handle with both hands and yanked as hard as she could. The door didn’t open. She pulled again, releasing a scream of frustration when it didn’t budge. She felt his shadow envelope her now. He was standing right behind her, his large palm pressed against the door, just above her head. The strong, cloying scent of his aftershave clouded her. Very gently, she felt his crotch press up against her buttocks.
‘Don’t touch me,’ the words wobbled out of her mouth. ‘I’m telling you right now. I know where you live. You lay a hand on me and I’ll report you.’ She wanted to tell him more, tell him that she knew his name, knew his past. She wanted to scare him off her but knew it would only land her in deeper trouble.
‘I’m trying to help you open the door,’ he said softly, his breath fluttering her hair, tickling her cheek. ‘Do you want me to open the door for you? Like a gentleman?’
‘Yes!’
‘No need to shout. I’m not deaf.’
‘Just open the door.’
‘Open the door… please?’
The pit of her stomach fell away. He pushed his crotch harder against her.
‘Open… the door… please,’ she said. It sounded like she was begging and she hated him for it. A scream was winding up inside her, ready to spring out of her mouth, but she had the sick feeling it wouldn’t come.
‘You’re not a policewoman and you’re not here to see anyone on the eighth floor. That makes me a little bit anxious,’ he said in a low, blunt voice that made her cheeks break out in gooseflesh. ‘I know every face in this building, but I don’t know you. It’s a mystery, isn’t it? But you do remind me of someone and I just can’t think who. You look so familiar.’
‘I just want to go,’ she told him, pulling the door. It still didn’t move.
‘Then go. I’m not keeping you here against your will.’
She pulled the door. It made a defiant clunking sound.
‘It won’t open,’ she whispered coarsely.
‘It helps when you press this.’
She saw his finger push the exit button by the side of the door that unlocked it. She flung the door open and raced out into the frosty daylight, fleeing from the sound of his laughter.
Chapter Eleven
Jack spent most of his Sunday and almost all of his Monday at the new warehouse in Cheshunt. It had once been home to a company that made bespoke furniture, but now, save for a few scraps of cloth left behind by the previous occupants, it was almost completely bare. Toward the far end of the warehouse was a small room, which Jack had taken great care in soundproofing by lining the cinderblock walls with boxes. On the door of the room was an old, faded sign that read ‘Oiling Room’. It would soon be ‘Morley’s Room’.
The solitude of the warehouse was the perfect place to declutter his mind and focus on the storm ahead. He opened up his laptop and smoothed out the creased sheet of paper that Emily had given him. Then he researched Morley’s ridiculous alias, ‘Flashy Menace’, and was stunned to find results on YouTube. The first video that appeared, titled ‘Money Up Front’ – Flashy Menace feat. Danger, uploaded in 2007, had 3,465 views. The thumbnail of the video showed a boy wearing a face mask with a skull motif that covered his nose and mouth. Beneath his wiry, conjoined eyebrows was a set of speckled, emerald-green eyes. Jack clicked the play button, his clammy palms leaving a shiny smear over the touchpad. His mouth became bitterly dry, his gums lined with cotton wool. A confusing jumble of strange-sounding musical notes played as the video began, and Jack could not quite place the instrument. It sounded like pan pipes perhaps, but synthesised over a rapid drumbeat. It was crazy, aggravating music – disorientating almost. The tinny laptop speakers crackled with feedback when the bass kicked in, and Jack felt his face starting to heat up the way it did when he was coming down with a cold.
He watched, disturbed and bewildered, as Morley began rapping over the beat while marching through an estate with about fifty other goons, some of them restraining muscly, aggressive dogs on short leashes. In more than half a dozen shots, the boy wearing the face mask – Morley’s alter ego, Flashy Menace – posed with several different weapons, among them a machete, a hand axe, a cleaver and a gun.
The camerawork was as jerky as the music, and by the fifteenth or sixteenth time that Jack watched the video, he began to feel the first stirrings of motion sickness. By the twenty-fifth time he watched it, he felt positively nauseated, but had learned some of the lyrics.
He snapped the laptop closed with the song’s chorus rattling around in his head. He had lost a lot of time studying the video, and now he was behind schedule.
* * *
He drove to May’s house, got out of the van and gingerly made his way up the path. The strain of heaving the stock from the van to the oiling room had teased his sciatic nerve, and now electric jolts of pain shot through his lower back. As he reached out to press the bell, the door opened. He could hear a George Michael love ballad sailing out from the living room. May’s head poked around from behind the door.
‘I’m glad you could make it,’ she said sweetly.
‘I forgot to bring wine,’ he said gruffly.
She laughed. ‘I knew you would. Come in.’
When he stepped inside, he saw that May was wearing a black silk gown.
‘See something you like?’ she asked, with a devilish grin.
‘Oh,’ he said, unbalanced. ‘I didn’t realise you were gonna…’ He looked down at his own clothes, the stained jumper and jeans he’d worn all day at work. ‘I didn’t think it was gonna be one of those nights, otherwise I would’ve showered first and…’
She put a finger on his lips, silencing him awkwardly. ‘It’s OK. I love you exactly how you are. That’s how a man should be.’ She pursed her lips and kissed him, her tongue sliding in his mouth. She tasted of vodka. ‘Take a seat. Dinner’s almost ready.’
He plonked himself down on her sofa, relieved to take the burden off his back. His temples still thumped with the music video’s bassline, and yet he had a masochistic urge to watch it again, to see Morley’s eyes the way he remembered them and fan the flames of his rage.
The smell of dinner wafted out from the kitchen and earned a snarl f
rom his stomach. The last thing he could remember eating was a ham sandwich the night before.
May returned from the kitchen with a glass of whisky. The ice cubes clinked as she handed it to him. ‘Get that down you,’ she purred.
He accepted it gratefully, took a sip, and said, ‘Dinner smells great. What is it?’
‘Lasagne,’ she replied, but pronounced it ‘las-ag-nay’, which bothered him. He smiled and sipped the whisky, could already feel it working its magic. ‘I know what you’re thinking, mister. But you’re going to have to wait. Dinner first,’ she said, stroking his knee. ‘Dessert comes later.’
She invited him to the dinner table about ten minutes later. When he stood up from the sofa, his glass was empty except for a couple of nubs of ice, and he no longer felt any pain in his back. His eyes felt raw and dry from staring at the laptop in the dingy warehouse light.
May lit the candles and presented his lasagne to him, garnished with parsley. The aroma flooded his mouth with saliva.
‘Go on,’ she said, sitting opposite him, her foot rubbing against his leg beneath the table.
‘Where’s yours?’ he asked, forking off a segment of the lasagne and shovelling it in his mouth. It was delicious, maybe the best las-ag-nay he’d ever eaten.
‘I’m only hungry for one thing,’ she said, lowering her eyes. Her voice had taken on that forced, sultry tone that she used when she decided it was time for intimacy.
He nodded and ate hungrily, opening his mouth to allow the steam to billow out. The food was gone in less than three minutes. May took his plate to the sink and returned with a bottle of champagne and two flutes.
‘What’s all this in aid of?’ he asked as she worked her thumbs into the cork.
She waited for it to pop, foam drooling over her hands, and then said, ‘It’s two things. First, it’s an apology. I’ve had an awful weekend thinking about how we left things on Friday. I should’ve been more understanding and it was selfish of me to behave the way I did. I wanted to call you all weekend but I thought I’d let you rest and recover. You look better, by the way.’
