I stop by the cleaner’s bathroom to put the wig carefully onto my head, covering up all of my own hair. I turn from side to side to make sure it looks decent enough. I put my hood up, making sure to let all of the long black hair spill out of it around my face. A couple of my neighbors have long black hair. That’s an added bonus. Anyone who decides to look at any CCTV footage will think I am them. They might be able to guess that it’s me if that is what they wanted to see, but they would never actually be able to prove it.
Too bad there’s no back entrance to my house that I can slip out of. I debate whether there’s a need for me to leave by one of the top windows that isn’t covered by someone’s CCTV camera. But that would involve a bunch of acrobatics, and my job hasn’t been the best for honing my body to peak physical perfection. I don’t want to injure my sweet self.
I slouch as I leave the house, taking care to ensure my body language doesn’t look like me. I walk around the block and through a park and down some other streets before even thinking of making my way to my destination. Finally I am banging on the door of the house that India lives in. I press every single buzzer too, except the top one belonging to the owner.
Someone answers the intercom and a rather meek female voice says, “Hello, can I help you?”
“Pizza delivery for number ten,” I say. “The guy’s not answering. Can you let me in please?”
She buzzes me in without asking any questions.
The inside of the house is a shit hole. Cheap brown carpet. Interior doors with numbers on them because every room has been turned into an apartment. A staircase leading up all the way to the top. I bounce up the stairs two at a time. If the lazy ass landlord isn’t in then I am going to be pissed. But a girl’s got to try.
There is only one door on the top floor. India’s landlord has a pad up here all to himself. The whole top floor is his own personal apartment, unlike his tenants who are all crammed into one room each.
I knock on his door politely, calling, “Pizza delivery.”
He doesn’t take long to come. I hear him stomping along on the other side of the door before it opens. He is scowling already. “I didn’t order no pizza,” he says angrily.
I jab my stun gun under his jaw and fry him as I step in and shut the door behind me. He drops to the floor with a satisfying thunk. The tenants probably feel it shaking their ceiling below. I kick him in the crotch before stepping over him. If the bastard has been the naughty boy I think he has, aching balls are soon going to be the least of his worries.
I quietly walk into every room of his apartment, making sure nobody else is in here. Luckily the apartment is empty. Lucky for them, not for me.
I put my stun gun back into my bag. I’d had to pay a premium for it given it is illegal, but in the absence of getting my hands on Agency weaponry it is the next best thing. Skeezy electronics stores where you can get anything definitely belong on my London-rocks list.
I go back into the hallway where the landlord is laying, and drag him by his scuzzy brown hair for a couple of inches. But the joy of dragging him by his hair turns out to not be worth it. The guy’s a lump. I end up having to yank him by his arms, not giving a toss about the fact that he’ll probably wake up in severe pain. Things are about to get worse for him.
Once I’ve dragged him into his kitchen, I tape up his arms and legs and play slap-a-face until he wakes up. He finds me sitting on his chest, my face inches from his. He can feel me breathing, but he can’t see me given the tape over his eyes. Oh so scary is the darkness. I can almost smell his fear. I like it.
“Huh whut?” he says blearily, through the tape I have stuck on his mouth.
I press a knife to his left cheek and a hammer to his right cheek. They are his. They had both been in his kitchen drawer.
“Choose,” I say. I press the blade just enough to bring up blood. I tap the hammer lightly so that he knows what it is.
He squirms in panic. “Don’t to it,” he begs, like the fool that he is.
It is almost funny. Now that the crap he has put out into the world is about to come back to him, he’s on the verge of shitting his pants. He really should not have pissed me off.
Too bad for him that I’m in the mood to play, and he’s the one I’ve decided to play with.
“You not gonna choose, big man baby, hmm?” I say playfully. “You want me to choose for you?”
Oh how much fun it would be to go big. To bleed him until he fills a bath. But big isn’t going to get me what I want. I have to start small. I force his hands to his side, which isn’t easy given that they are tied together. I position them against the floor and then I smash the tip of his little finger with the hammer.
He screeches like a wounded walrus. The tape mostly muffles the sound.
“Shut up,” I say, and slap his cheek lightly.
He whimpers and bawls like a baby, but he soon stops, too scared to keep crying when I press the knife and the hammer into his face again.
“Do we understand each other?” I ask.
He nods in agreement.
“Tell me about Rachel,” I say to him.
He shakes his head vehemently. He mumbles through the tape. Clearly he is saying that he has nothing to do with her. The liar. I roll my eyes. This time I smash the hammer into his nose.
He screeches longer and louder. Blood bubbles out of his nostril and pops, splattering in a rather pretty way. Since he is unable to breathe through his taped up mouth, this makes things difficult for him. I get off him and him roll over onto his side. I don’t want him to suffocate before I’m done.
“Shut up,” I tell him.
This time it is harder for him to obey given his sheer panic. He does eventually stop. As he snuffles and whimpers and moans, I roll him over and sit back down on his chest. The man is clearly having trouble breathing. Good for me.
I tweak his nose and he squeals.
“I’m going to take the gag off now,” I tell him. “So that you can speak. But if you scream again, I’ll put it back on, and if you can’t breathe the next time I hit you, that’ll be your problem. Do we understand each other?”
He nods his head vigorously. I am glad to see he knows me by now. He knows I mean business.
I rip the tape off his mouth. To his credit he doesn’t immediately scream. He pants for breath. I imagine a stream of blood is running from his nasal passage and down the back of his throat. It makes him choke and gasp as he answers my questions. Flecks of blood fly out of his mouth. By the time he has told me everything that I want to know his face looks like a Jackson Pollock.
“You disgusting little creep,” I tell him. “Now tell me you’re sorry for being such bad boy.”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” he babbles. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. I swear.”
I get to my feet, and he gives a whimper of relief.
“I agree. You won’t. It’s time for your nap now.”
I jab my stun gun under his jaw.
Chapter 18
STORM
Monroe knocks on the door of Storm’s office, and when Storm waves him in, he pokes his head in.
“Boss, I’ve tracked down the details for India and Rachel’s landlord.”
Storm stands up from his chair and stretches. He’d been scrutinizing the report forensics had sent him from their assessment of India, paying attention down to the fibers and dust and chemicals they’d found on her body and hair and clothes. On the surface the report has nothing new, but Storm knows even the smallest detail could come in handy later on.
Storm follows Monroe out to the bank of desks Monroe shared with Leo and Remi. The other two swivel their chairs around to pay attention.
“His name is Kurt Gibbon,” says Monroe, “And he’s the registered owner of the house where Rachel Garrett was renting an apartment. My search showed that his own residential address is at the same house.”
Monroe hands Storm a printout, and as Storm scans it Monroe summarizes for Leo and Remi. “K
urt Gibbon is in his early fifties. He has run two failed businesses into the ground in the past eight years, one an attempt to start a model agency and the second a record label that quickly went bust. Lots of debt, but his criminal history is clean.”
“Human?” asks Leo.
Monroe nods. “Looks like it. There’s nothing to suggest he is anything other than human, although given that otherkind in London are not required to be registered, he—”
“Could be anything,” Remi and Leo finish simultaneously.
Storm notes with a frown that Kurt Gibbon’s address is on the same road that Diana lives on. The fact that she could just as easily have lived at Kurt Gibbon’s house bothers him. In fact, he has no idea who her landlord is. He really should find out.
Leo grabs his jacket and weapon’s belt as Storm goes to get his keys. As they drive to cut Gibbon’s house, Leo points out a take away place. “We could drop down by Diana’s apartment and take her some chicken soup,” he quips.
“Shut up,” Storm says shortly.
Leo chuckles.
Monroe’s information has shown no record of Kurt Gibbon being recently employed, so their chances of him at home are better than average. A tenant lets them into the house and points them up the stairs to the top floor. Five minutes of banging loudly on Gibbon’s apartment door yields no results.
Leo puts his ear against the door and listens. He shakes his head at Storm. There are no sounds audible inside.
Given that the source of the Agency’s information on Kurt’s relationship to Rachel is Jacob Jabari’s word, there are no reasonable grounds for Storm and Leo to enter the premises uninvited. Storm calls Monroe, asking him to check if Gibbon’s social media profiles show any information about where he likes to spend his time.
It is evening. Knowing that some of the house’s residents must be in, Storm and Leo begin knocking on doors, each taking an alternate apartment and working their way down each level.
The first to answer Storm’s knock are a trio of teenage girls. They are Chinese nationals, all three living in the same one-room apartment. They giggle when they see Storm. They tell him they are students. Their english is hesitant.
As soon as Storm asks about their landlord, their facial expressions turn worried. The one with the best english says no to every single one of Storm’s questions. She does not know where the landlord is. She does not know what he likes to do in his spare time. She does not know when he might come home. She hurriedly bangs the door shut when Storm is done.
The next to answer are a young couple in their early twenties. The boyfriend seems disinterested, saying he has no idea where the landlord might be. Music is blasting out of their room, and he is clearly more interested in getting back to whatever he was doing. When he goes back into the room, the girlfriend lingers at the doorway.
“Is Mr Gibbon in trouble?” she asks.
“Do you think he’s the type to get into trouble?” Storm asks.
She bites her lip. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Do you know India Lawrenson and Rachel Garrett? They live in this building.”
She shakes her head. “They kept themselves to themselves. Rachel’s the girl who got killed recently, wasn’t she? We saw it on the news. You don’t think it was Mr Gibbon?”
“Do you think it could be him?”
She gives an anxious laugh. “I don’t know.”
“What’s Mr Gibbon like?” Storm asks her.
She shrugs. “Suresh deals with him mostly.”
Something about the way that she averts her eyes makes Storm ask, “Is that because you prefer to avoid Mr Gibbon?”
She glances nervously in the direction of her boyfriend, and then says in a hushed voice, “He gives me the creeps. He is not a nice guy. He’s always hanging around, watching. You know?”
“Did you ever see him watching Rachel and India?”
“I don’t know. I don’t hang out in the hallways. I like to get back to my room quickly.”
“Any idea where Mr Gibbon might be today?”
She frowns. “He has this woman friend. I’ve seen him with her sometimes but… She’s not his girlfriend or anything.”
Storm leads in confidingly. “How do you know that?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s a hooker. I don’t know her name.”
“Anything else about where he might be?”
“We went bowling with some friends once to the local bowling alley two streets away. I saw Mr Gibbon there. He was with his buddies. I never went back there after that.”
When Storm and Leo have finished canvassing the house, nobody else has given them any useful information. Storm messages Monroe, asking him to see if he can find the name of Gibbon’s hooker friend. In the meantime Storm and Leo decide to try the bowling alley.
As they drive there, Storm comments, “Notice anything odd?”
Leo nods his head. “All the residents were female. Young girls. Only a couple with boyfriends.”
“That doesn’t happen by accident,” Storm says.
“Unless your landlord is a creep,” Leo finishes. “I hate it when they run,” he adds.
Kurt Gibbon is not at the bowling alley. The assistant manager however is eager to be helpful. He seems to not think much of Gibbon or of his boss’s friendship with the man. He gives Storm the names of several of Gibbon’s friends, two of whom live locally. He is not averse to taking their addresses off his boss’s rolodex.
A half hour later Storm finds that one of those friends has spare keys to Kurt’s apartment. Storm manages to convince him that they are concerned about Gibbon’s safety, and the friend lets them in. He seems more amused than worried when they find smears of fresh blood on Gibbon’s kitchen floor.
Storm is taking a swab of the blood when Monroe calls back with the address of Gibbon’s lady friend. Twenty minutes later Storm and Leo find Gibbon holed up in her apartment. His fresh wounds tell Storm he has been up to no good, and this is compounded by his effort to make a run for it out of the ground floor window. He gets stuck with one leg in and one leg out.
Leo drags him back in. “Kurt Gibbon, you’re coming with us.”
Chapter 19
ALYS
I strut into the hospital carrying a super-sized meat feast pizza in a box. It is just about dinnertime, and nobody can resist a pizza. I smooth down the hair of my black wig as I navigate to the ward that India’s room is on. I catch a guy leering at me. He’s sat next to his pregnant girlfriend in a wheelchair and he’s looking at me. I blow him a kiss and he puffs up like he’s hot. I’m killer with these red lips on and he’s about to find out.
I prance straight at him, my butt wiggling like it has a life of its own. When I get to him I bend down to look him in the face from two inches away.
“Hey baby,” I coo in a baby-doll porn-star voice. “You looking at me baby? You order this special delivery pizza with a girl on top, baby?”
Everyone is looking at him and suddenly he doesn’t like it. “N-no,” he stutters, his face going red.
I take hold of his jaw and jerk his face around towards his baby-mama. “Keep your eyes on your prize, jackass.” I slap his cheek hard as I leave. An older lady nearby chuckles.
I take the elevator up to India’s ward. From down the corridor I can see there is a cop marching to and fro outside her room. The other is sitting in a chair outside it. A nurse is walking towards me. I thrust the pizza box into her hands.
“This is for the police officers guarding the werewolf,” I tell her. “It’s their dinner.”
I turn away, ignoring her complaints that it’s not her job to be serving pizzas to police officers who shouldn’t be in hospitals. I go and loiter in a waiting room for a few minutes. Just long enough for the officers to munch a couple of slices of their meaty cheesy carb-fest, laced with a little something extra special. I don’t leave it too long though. Wouldn’t want those boys to pass out or someone will notice what I’ve done.
Judging that
the moment is ripe, I stroll towards India’s room and find the marching officer is swaying unsteadily on his feet.
“Come and sit down,” I tell him, and he obeys unthinkingly, letting me guide him by the elbow into India’s room.
She gives a start of surprise to see me, stiffening up in her bed as if she is on the point of fight or flight.
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