Proximity

by Jem Tugwell

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ the front one said. His two friends scowled and nodded in unison.

  ‘We were just looking…’ I said.

  ‘Come with us,’ he said.

  We had the muscle in front of us and the locked door behind us. Nowhere to go.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  The question seemed to confuse him for a second, but then he got it and started to turn. All his muscled bulk didn’t make for agility, and he turned slowly. His two friends turned as well, getting themselves into a temporary beefcake gridlock. It was like watching three big lorries trying to reverse and manoeuvre in a tight space. All that was missing was the warning beeps when they went into reverse.

  They sorted themselves out and led us to one of the private doors we had passed. First Muscle opened and went through the door. The other two stood across the corridor like a roadblock forcing us onto a diversion. We followed the first guy. We had no choice, and the other two closed up behind us, trapping us between them.

  After some twists and turns in the corridors, First Muscle stopped outside an open door and waved us inside.

  I heard the words I had been dreading: ‘Give us a kiss, Frenchie.’

  ***

  Doris’ voice was deep and gravelly from a lifetime of cigarettes. I looked at the desk to avoid seeing the tongue that would be waving in the air. A snake’s tongue tasting the air for the scent of its prey.

  A big hand pushed me down into a seat and Zoe appeared in a chair next to me.

  The hand forced my head up. I looked at Doris, relieved that the tongue was away. She still looked like a sweet little old lady, except for the rings: skulls of all designs, skulls in flying helmets, or sombreros, some with crossed-bones. Most were metal, but it looked like some white ones could have been carved from bone.

  ‘Who’s your pretty little friend, Frenchie?’ Doris said.

  ‘I’m DC Jordan,’ Zoe said, a challenge in her tone as she held Doris’ gaze.

  ‘Got some spirit this one, eh?’ She leered at Zoe.

  ‘Are you slipping her one, Frenchie? If you’re not, I bet you’re gagging for it…’

  ‘No, I’m–’

  Doris steam-rolled on. ‘You gagging to grind away on top of her? Tasty bit of skirt like that.’ She turned back to me. ‘Bet you want her to replace Mary now you’re divorced.’

  I wasn’t surprised she knew about my divorce. She had always been well-informed.

  Doris looked back at Zoe and winked. ‘Does he put the privacy glass on in the car and interfere with you, Zoe? Good thing about driver-less cars, eh, plenty of time for a fumble with Uncle Frenchie.’ She leered some more. ‘Is he making you earn a promotion on your back?’

  I looked at Zoe, trying to give her some support. ‘We have a professional relationship, Doris,’ I said.

  ‘Doris?’ she spat. ‘Doris? You always were filth. Always taking a fucking liberty. All my days, I've always come down hard on disrespect. It’s Mrs Barclay to you, scum.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barclay, please forgive my rudeness,’ I said, seeing my politeness causing anger to flare in her eyes.

  ‘Professional? You?’

  ‘Mrs Barclay, as DI Lussac said, our relationship is strictly professional,’ Zoe said with a sweet smile.

  I was proud of her, standing up to Doris’ foul mouth in the perfect way, and I took advantage as Doris paused for breath.

  ‘You must be Tom Mitchell.’ I said to the man sitting next to Doris. Even in a smart blue suit with a white shirt, hair neatly clipped and gelled, he was still recognisable from the photo of the man with the hat and dreadlocks.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  I said, ‘We need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘You’ve got a fucking liberty, Frenchie. You come in here without so much as a please and nose around.’ She slid a wrinkled hand on top of Tom’s and patted it. ‘Tom’s a good boy, and he’s done nothing wrong, so you can both fuck off and don’t come back.’

  Two hands slid under my armpits, and I was yanked airborne and towards the door. The muscle carried me with my feet skimming the floor. I could hear Zoe protesting behind me.

  ‘Fucking liberty,’ Doris said, as we were hurled into the corridor and marched out.

  30

  Thief

  I put a funnel into the neck of one of the jerrycans, picked up the razor-sharp scalpel and sliced a smile into Two’s throat. I wanted as much blood out as I could get. His heart had stopped a while ago, so I left gravity to finish the job.

  I put a thick plastic sheet on the bed and slid it back under his shoulders. After spinning the back of the bed under his bum, I released the ratchet on the first rope. To avoid a nasty burn, I made sure that I wasn’t holding the rope as it ran through the ratchet. Two’s left leg thumped down onto the bed. I visited each ratchet, and when all his limbs were down, I pulled the ropes back through their eyes and spent some time cleaning and drying the ropes as best I could. I left them in neat coils in their cupboard.

  Now I needed to tidy Two away.

  I pushed his bed out of the cage, along the passage and into the garage. I had put lots more plastic sheeting on the floor under the saw. It was old, but new to me, and gleamed in the middle of the room. I had picked it up at a bargain price a few years before from a butcher who was forced out of business by the red meat restrictions. It looked a little like a scorpion: four bent legs supported a flat, metal body, and a large metal ‘tail’ curved up and over the metal bed. The ‘sting’ was the bandsaw’s blade.

  The green button made the bandsaw whirl into life. The long, narrow, rotating blade sang in anticipation. I pushed Two’s wrist towards the blade and paused. Better make sure my fingers are out of the way. The butcher had promised that the blades were specially designed to slice through meat and bone with no clogging – just a nice clean cut. I pushed again, the blade sliced through the wrist as promised. Two’s hand plopped to one side.

  My plan was to do all the cutting in one go, but I couldn’t resist trying my other new toy. With a hiss, the lid lifted and slid back. So cool. Two’s hand slipped into the bag, which I placed onto the machine’s bed, making sure the open end was straight and flat on the rails. I reread the instructions to make sure I was doing it right. The lid hissed down, the compressor hummed for a few seconds and then the light turned green. I opened the lid again and examined Two’s vacuum-packed hand. Airtight – no mess and no smell. Perfect.

  It took me longer than I expected to do everything, but by one in the morning I had a nice neat pile of Two bags stacked into a large trunk. The blood had gone down the drain, followed by ten minutes with the jet wash and lots of drain cleaner. Two’s clothes and the sheeting I put into the incinerator and I spent another hour cleaning and storing the saw.

  I needed some sleep.

  I needed to decide who deserved me next.

  31

  DI Clive Lussac

  ‘That went well,’ I said, landing on the pavement outside the Health Bank.

  Zoe turned and looked at me, eyebrows raised in two little arches. ‘Really?’

  ‘Doris is hiding something.’ I rubbed my armpits and biceps to ease the pain from the ‘help’ the muscle had given me out of the building. ‘She wouldn’t have been so nice otherwise.’

  ‘Really? She was being nice?’

  ‘Well, it’s all relative.’ I gave her an apologetic half-smile, half-shrug gesture. ‘But for Doris, yeah. She must have liked you.’

  Zoe shook her head.

  I called the car, and as we waited for it to come to pick us up, I felt the glare from one of the muscles who still stood in the doorway.

  I could see Zoe was reliving the shock to the system that Doris gave you. ‘You did well. That was the right way to handle her,’ I told her.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said, watching our car’s silent approach. It stopped and opened its doors. It was weird, but I felt better since the meeting and getting th
rown out. I didn’t know if it was the adrenaline, but I felt more alive than I had in a long time. I was starting to feel like I had a purpose again. Maybe it was the confrontation with an old adversary. Maybe it was the message I had just received from Sophia: ‘When are you going to take me out for dinner?’

  ***

  On our crime wall at PCU, Zoe pinched the photos of Doris and Tom Mitchell and dragged them up to the top of the ‘Possible Suspects’ list, settling them next to Art and Esteban. She moved Ameobi and Bailey to form our second row. It didn’t feel like much progress.

  I was staring at the screen, stuck in a thought process, trying to pick the killer. My eyes flicked between Doris, Esteban and Art. Ip dip sky blue, who’s it–

  I dragged my focus back into the room. Zoe waited, bored with my silence. She slid onto the corner of her usual desk and waited.

  ‘We should look at why, not how,’ I said. ‘Why Karina was killed or why Alan Kane is missing.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Zoe took a big breath in to prepare herself, and then started. ‘Art has the position and the knowledge, but already has power and money.’

  ‘There’s never too much power. He’s hiding something, I can feel it.’ I tapped the table for emphasis.

  ‘But why would he kill Karina or take Alan?’

  ‘You saw Karina, she was beautiful, and we know Art has a roaming eye.’

  She looked thoughtful and said, ‘And Alan? That won’t be sexual for Art.’

  ‘No, but Alan was involved with iMe from the beginning. Art could be out for revenge for something Alan did.’

  ‘So could Esteban.’

  ‘Maybe. Can you check into Alan’s time with iMe? Also, check if Art or Esteban came into contact with Karina.’

  Zoe’s fingers danced in the air as she made notes. ‘Yep.’

  My eyes went back to Doris on the display wall. ‘Doris’ background says she has the will and the money to build a Suppressor. She also has Tom Mitchell.’

  ‘So, what are they doing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, ‘but…’

  Zoe shifted, uncomfortable on the desk, and looked at me again. ‘But what?’

  I held my hand up to stop her. ‘That door with the old lock seemed out of place. Everything else was new and controllable.’

  ‘You want to check it?’ she said.

  I nodded, and I watched as she turned on her HUD and started to move things around. The crime wall cleared, and a map of the Health Bank appeared. Zoe scrolled and zoomed so that we could see a section of the corridor where the resistance training door was. We couldn’t see CCTV-style images, just a line drawing of the floor plan that was compulsory for every building to provide. White lines on a black background straight from the architect’s plans.

  ‘This is live,’ she said.

  The corridor was empty, and Zoe zoomed out a bit so that we could see part of the layout of the gym. The area had about ten green dots in it, each where a person was presumably on some piece of exercise equipment or mat.

  ‘Can you rewind the history to find someone going through the door?’ I said. ‘I’d like to follow them through and see if it tells us anything.’

  The time display on the screen counted backwards in jerky twenty-second intervals. Dots came and went along the corridor, others moved between exercise stations in the gym, then after about fifteen minutes of time had rewound, two dots went through the resistance training door.

  ‘OK, now let’s go forward and follow them,’ I said. I felt that we were onto something, and the anticipation fizzed in me.

  The two dots on the screen stopped in front of the door.

  Zoe moved the cursor over the dot on the right who would be operating the key-code. ‘That’s Zac Prentice,’ Zoe said as his picture and personal details came up. ‘He’s one of the bouncers we met yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, the one who lifted you out of your chair. Who’s the other one?’

  ‘It must be a member – she’s a city lawyer.’

  ‘She’s being escorted. That’s weird, all the members we saw moved around without needing escorts.’

  The two dots moved again, passing through the door and Zoe scrolled the display to keep them in the centre of the screen. They went along a short corridor and down a spiral staircase. At the bottom, both dots were stationary for about thirty seconds, and then Zac Prentice went back up the stairs, leaving the lawyer to carry on.

  ‘What did they do at the bottom of the stairs?’ I asked.

  Zoe stared at the screen, not wanting to miss anything. ‘Don’t know, there’s no additional detail,’ she mumbled.

  The lawyer went past two empty rooms, then past another with people in. The two dots in the room were almost on top of each other.

  ‘Hold it there,’ I said, pointing at the dots in the room. ‘Who’re they?’

  Zoe paused the screen and checked the details of each of the dots. ‘Lucia Rossi is one of them. She’s twenty-four and works at the Health Bank as a personal trainer. The other is Toby Robertson, he’s sixty-two and works for a civil rights charity.’

  ‘That’s a very small room to exercise in.’

  ‘And the main gym had a lot of mats for stretching, I doubt they need more.’

  This was significant, I thought. If it were legitimate, then the room would be in the main member’s area. A locked door and an escorted member meant some form of two-tier membership, and the second tier had to be getting better benefits than the ordinary members. Toby looked like he was benefiting from Lucia’s intimate attention.

  ‘Follow the lawyer again,’ I said.

  The lawyer’s signal continued past more small side rooms, which were either empty or with two dots showing in them. The last room was a little larger, with three dots in it, so close together that the dots merged into a large ellipse. Zoe brought up the details: A member with a personal trainer on each side. I raised my eyebrows. It was easy to imagine what was going on in there.

  The lawyer got to the end of the corridor where it opened out into a large area with at least fifty people in.

  ‘That looks like a casino,’ I said, getting up to cross to the screen. ‘Look here.’ I pointed at a line of dots with two dots opposite them. ‘That’s a bar. See the line of people waiting, and the two dots must be the bar staff.’

  Zoe nodded, seeing the meaning of the dots on a black background.

  She pointed at the rough circles of dots. ‘Then these people are gambling.’ Some circles had four dots, others more.

  ‘Yes, they’re card tables, and this long table could be roulette.’

  ***

  Nisha Bhatt rocked back in her chair and pondered her screen. Zoe had run her through what we had found, and now we waited for her verdict.

  ‘OK, I’ll buy it,’ she said. ‘And Alan Kane is a member?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What about Karina?’

  ‘Well.’ I scratched my neck. ‘We’re not sure how she fits but there has to be a link. We need to find it.’

  Bhatt shook her head. ‘So, now what?’

  ‘We have to get in to see what’s happening for ourselves. All the members in the resistance training room are wealthy. They’ll go silent and get their lawyers if we don’t surprise them and catch them red-handed.’

  ‘So how do you want to do it?’ Bhatt asked, sitting forward.

  I spent the next few minutes going over the plan Zoe and I had come up with.

  ‘Do it,’ Bhatt ordered.

  32

  DI Clive Lussac

  An old bank would have been secure, but the Health Bank was a gym and run by all sorts of health and safety directives. That meant multiple escape routes for the occupants and back doors. Zoe found the details of all the door locks from the building’s plans before we left, and she had already pre-programmed them to open for us.

  We waited, leaning against the brick wall at the back of the Health Bank. We were about halfway down a narro
w alley that ran behind the parade of shops. Opposite us, the other wall was a designated street art site. The psychedelic patterns intermingled with faces and animals. I loved the vibrancy of the colours and the sheer scale of the artists’ imagination.

  While we waited, a man with greasy hair and a huge beard walked down the alley with a group of tourists.

  ‘What does it all mean?’ one of the tourists asked, pointing at the wall.

  The man’s beard and moustache parted like a sudden opening in the bushes of a garden maze. ‘This piece expresses the isolation of the individual trapped in their hostile environment.’

  ‘The art’s good but the explanation’s bollocks,’ I muttered to Zoe.

  ‘I’ve done one of those tours,’ she said. ‘You’d learn something if you tried.’

  I spent a minute trying to think of a quick comeback, but I had nothing. I’d come up with something brilliant when it was much too late.

  ‘The crew are outside,’ Zoe said. ‘Bhatt has just approved the search warrant.’

  ‘OK, send them in. We’ll go when they’re causing the maximum noise.’ My pulse rate reading on my HUD started to climb. ‘Get them to confirm when.’

  Zoe relayed the message to her crew, and then we waited. We were both breathing hard despite not moving. I zoned out the alley and the lecturer droning on. All I could see was the door.

  ‘OK, the three bouncers are coming into the reception area. The crew are flash messaging their IDs to everyone in the vicinity.’