Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both!

by Jeremy Costello

  A pause. ‘Any luck with the riddle?’ she asked.

  He shrugged.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no. Just wanted to let you know that Abigail Fuller, the girl who flattened me...she's in briefing room two with the social worker.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Well, I thought you might be interested to hear, she’s started speaking.’

  *

  Abigail Fuller looked so small. He watched her through the one-sided mirror sitting daintily with the social worker, a podgy man of around fifty with thick grey hair and an equally thick beard.

  The pair was sitting quietly, neither of them speaking, but the girl, legs dangling over the edge of her chair, looked somehow different. The traces of pallid shock that marred her face earlier were gone. What remained was a healthy-looking, pretty, ten year old girl. Did she know what had happened to her and her parents over the last few days, or was she so zoned out and traumatized by it all, she had blocked it from memory?

  She didn’t look traumatized, or zoned out.

  Pushing his way into the briefing room York was greeted by dubious eyes. He couldn’t blame them for their scepticism; it had been a strange morning, and he wasn’t exactly a picture of health.

  ‘Hello,’ he said with the least fabricated smile he could muster. ‘My name’s Nicolas.’

  Abigail Fuller didn’t reply, but the social worker held out his hand. ‘Hi Nicolas, I’m Roy. Roy Sunnily.’

  He took Sunnily’s hand and shook it. The man had a firm grip.

  ‘Abigail,’ Sunnily murmured, ‘would you like to introduce yourself to Nicolas?’

  York decided instantly that he liked Roy Sunnily. Not only did he have the gentlest voice attached to a gentler manner, but his name suited him perfectly.

  The girl remained silent, examining York with wary yet strikingly beautiful green eyes. Eventually she muttered, ‘Is that your full name?’

  York smiled. ‘Nope. Nicolas Alfred York is my full name.’

  ‘Alfred?’

  ‘Yep, named after my dad’s favourite film director, Alfred Hitchcock.’

  ‘Wow,’ the girl proclaimed. ‘Cruel.’

  ‘Could’ve been worse. I should just thank my lucky stars I didn’t get lumbered with Quentin or Ridley.’

  The girl didn’t smile. Instead she glanced up to the ceiling, at nothing.

  ‘How are you holding up, Abigail?’ he asked. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  Eyes fixed to the ceiling, she said, ‘Keanu Reeves, perhaps?’

  York’s smile broadened. ‘Only if I get Michelle Pfeiffer.’

  ‘Ha, in your dreams!’

  ‘Hey, us oldies are allowed crushes too.’

  Abigail offered the faintest of smiles. ‘I think I’ll just have some water.’

  The girl’s level of maturity was astounding, York thought, and she seemed incredibly calm, like she was talking with friends in the school playground.

  Signalling the uniform outside the room, York asked him to fetch a glass of water.

  ‘So, Abbey,’ he continued, ‘I’m guessing you have lots of questions about the last couple of days?’

  A brief shake of the head.

  No.

  ‘You don’t? There’s nothing you’d like to talk about?’

  ‘I’m sorry I hit that lady,’ she uttered. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.’

  ‘Holly? Oh, she’s okay. She knows you didn’t mean it.’

  She glanced down at her shoes. ‘I…I…’

  ‘Abbey,’ Sunnily cut in, ‘is there something you’d like to tell us?’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘If there’s anything you can remember about the last couple of nights, anything at all,’ said York. ‘You see, there’s a bad man out there and we need to catch him before he hurts anyone.’

  ‘Anyone else, you mean?’

  York caught Sunnily's eye. The counsellor's apologetic face told him that the subject of the parents had already been broached.

  ‘Abbey, look, I’m not going to try and fool you or treat you like a child. I’m very sorry for what happened to your parents –’

  ‘No you’re not! That’s just something policemen say to make people feel better. Anyway, I’m not sorry they’re dead. The world is nicer without them.’

  ‘Abbey,’ said York gently, ‘do you know anything about a secret hiding place in your bedroom?’ He winced at the question, but for his own peace of mind he needed to know if Abbey had ever been exposed to the VHS material. The image of Frasier’s face and sandy locks seeped into his thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘I know about the secret hiding place.’

  ‘Did you ever look inside?’

  The girl remained silent and glanced back at her shoes.

  ‘It’s okay, Abbey,’ he added, ‘you’re free to speak here, no one’s going to get mad.’

  ‘I never looked in there. I wasn’t allowed.’

  Very briefly Roy Sunnily’s eyes flickered in York’s direction. The girl was lying.

  ‘Since the last time you saw your mum and dad,’ he probed, ‘where have you been?’

  The girl looked blank.

  ‘Did you leave the apartment, or were you there all along?’

  ‘I hardly left my bedroom. I wasn’t allowed out by myself. But my parents weren’t there, so I went out for food a couple of times.’

  Looking into Abbey’s green eyes, he hesitated. ‘Was there anyone else in the apartment in the last couple of days? Anybody you didn’t know?’

  The uniform came back with the water. The girl took it from him and held it with both hands, her gaze fixated on the glass.

  ‘Abbey?’

  ‘One night I was sleeping and a noise woke me. I thought mum and dad were back so I got out of bed and went down the corridor. All the lights were off, which was weird. Then I saw…’

  Roy Sunnily rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.

  ‘What did you see, Abbey?’

  ‘There was a man. He was wearing black, all black. Like he’d just stepped out of midnight.’

  Like he’d just stepped out of midnight..?

  ‘What did he look like, can you describe him?’

  ‘He was…normal. He wasn’t tall but he wasn’t short. Not fat, not thin. Dark hair. But he was mostly in shadow. He walked into the kitchen carrying some kind of box. I was there in the room but he didn’t see me. I stayed behind the sofa. It’s dark there. For a while I waited and nothing happened. I could hear noises in the kitchen, and a voice, like he was talking to himself. And then I saw him again. He was still carrying the box, and then…’

  ‘And then what, what happened next?’

  Abigail’s face changed, like she was recalling something relevant, something potent. ‘He just stopped. Stopped right there in the middle of the room and looked straight at me. I could see the glint of his eyes from the street lights. And I just stared back. He was looking at me, right at me. And then I had the weirdest thought…’

  York raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I wasn’t scared of him. Not one bit.’

  8

  ‘How was the girl?’

  York took a seat on the edge of Newport’s desk. ‘She’s sorry she hit you.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘She say anything else? Like how she came to be alone in that apartment?’

  York nodded, his thick locks bouncing over his forehead. ‘Three days ago, Michael and Harriet Fuller told their daughter they’d be back later that day. They were going out all afternoon “on business”. They never came back.’

  ‘She not think to call the police?’

  ‘She said her parents left her all the time, it was nothing new. They went to Thailand once and left her for three weeks.’

  ‘You’re kidding! She’s ten.’

  ‘She expected them back at any time. Not that she was devoid of visitors.’

  Newport frowned.

  �
��Don’t get excited. She described pretty much every five-foot-something this side of the Thames. By all accounts it could’ve been me.’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘Funny.’

  Seconds ticked by, an odd silence hanging between them. She wanted to ask York why he looked like shit again, but she knew that'd piss him off. His red-raw eyes were embedded in charcoaled skin around his eye sockets. He looked so desperately in need of sleep. Or food. Or both.

  ‘She tell you anything useful at all, or are we still blowing smoke?’

  Her partner slowly shook his head: No.

  The thing about spending so much time with somebody was you got to know a hell of a lot about them. You got to know their little tells and giveaways. York was lying, and he’d been lying to her quite a bit lately. God only knew why. He used to tell her everything. Still, it was lucid to her, and probably only to her, that Abigail Fuller had told him something which he felt prudent to keep from her. Now wasn’t the time to press him.

  ‘Have you looked at the riddle?’ he asked at last.

  ‘No, I’ve been doing my nails. Come on, guv, what do you think I’ve been doing?’

  ‘Any joy?’

  ‘There’s been a lot of head-scratching going on.’

  She examined her partner’s face, noticing his glazed eyes. He was looking at the large wall clock over her shoulder.

  ‘Shit,’ he uttered, springing from his seat. He pushed through to the window overlooking the building’s fascia.

  ‘What is it?’ she whispered catching up.

  Others joined them at the window, a collage of eyes tracking the figure crossing the tarmac casually.

  She understood. There he was, the messenger in the green hooded sweater, walking nonchalantly onto the scene.

  His face buried under the hood, everything about this person looked average. Was it the same man whom Abigail Fuller had seen, she wondered? Blue jeans, black shoes or trainers, and that fucking sweater, masking anything of descriptive use.

  At the fence towards the end of the building opposite, the man stopped. He leaned back against the panels and dug his hands into his pockets, settling himself in for a wait.

  She checked her watch. They had one hour.

  *

  ‘Okay everybody, listen up,’ yelled York over the buzz of tension. ‘Our man across the street is here for our solution to the riddle. If we don’t already know the answer then everybody needs to get their eyes down and come up with ideas. If that man walks away with nothing, a young girl is going to pay for our mistakes.

  ‘I know that some of you feel like puppets playing this man’s game, I’ve heard a few of you talking. But the alternative is to sit on our hands and do nothing, hope the killer won’t make good on his threat. From what I can gather about this man so far, he’s not going to do that. And if we wake up to another body tomorrow, I want to believe in my gut that we did everything we could to prevent it from happening. For now, you, me, we are puppets, and we don’t have the luxury of controlling our own strings. But if it’s what it takes to get closer to this guy, then we'll do as we're told until he makes a mistake. And he will make a mistake, mark my words. So, let’s get to it. Throw your ideas my way.’

  Up on the whiteboard, the riddle had been jotted neatly in block capitals.

  An apple begins with me and age too. I am in the midst of a man and foremost in every apprehension. You will find me in everyday and see me in all autumns. It's a pity that you cannot see me in the night, when run must I, hidden from sight. What am I?

  Standing before the board, York read the puzzle for the hundredth time. All he saw was the same few sentences of nonsensical bullshit.

  Newport joined him. ‘We’re running out of time.’

  York closed his eyes.

  ‘Does any of that make sense to you?’ she asked.

  ‘Should it?’

  ‘They do say you're the genius around here.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  ‘So..?’

  ‘So tell me what you think, Holly! Don’t just rely on me.’

  ‘I don’t know, boss. My bloody eyes are sore, I‘ve read it that many times.’

  He took a step back. ‘Imagine it’s a crime scene, right? What’s the first thing you’d do?’

  ‘I’d detach myself from what I’m seeing.’

  ‘So detach yourself and read the first sentence again.’

  An apple begins with me and age too…

  Newport scanned the board. ‘What am I looking for?’

  York took another step back. ‘I believe the trick with riddles is to apply everything you possibly can to one sentence, and then try to reattach the same logic to the remaining lines. Think about it, how does an apple ‘become?’

  Newport shrugged.

  ‘I asked myself that question earlier,' said York. 'And I didn’t get it then. But now...’

  An eerie quiet had fallen over the Pit. Others were listening to York, ears pricked tenaciously.

  ‘What?’ she probed.

  York took a third step back and scanned the room. ‘You, come over here,’ he said, pointing out a lad in his mid-twenties who stepped confidently from the assembly. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘PC Dale Yates, sir.’

  ‘Dale, answer me something, what does your dad do for a living?’

  The young constable frowned. ‘He’s a taxi driver.’

  ‘A cabbie?’ York shook his head and ushered Dale back into the gathering. In that same instant, the superintendent forced herself into the fray.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the commander questioned. ‘Some kind of mother’s meeting?’

  ‘Guv, perfect timing,’ said York. He grasped her by the shoulders and shuffled her to the middle of the floor. ‘Your father, what does he do for a living?’

  Mason didn’t hesitate. ‘He’s retired.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘He was a beat copper. Nick, what’s going on –’

  ‘A flatfoot,’ he echoed excitedly. ‘And you became a copper too!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, you might say that the apple didn’t fall too far from the…’

  A medley of muted voices completed the sentence: ‘Tree.’

  Mason looked to Newport, bewildered.

  ‘Look at the whole thing,’ he urged. ‘An apple begins on a tree. And age? A tree can’t produce an apple until it’s of a ripe age.’

  From the back of the room a voice piped up, ‘And the midst of a man? How does that fit in?’

  York bit at his bottom lip as he pondered that. ‘The midst of a man, Dale,’ he said picking out the young constable again, ‘is called a..?’

  ‘Torso,’ Yates replied.

  ‘Or?’

  ‘A trunk!’ Newport cut in.

  ‘You see trees every day, and you see them down to their bare branches every autumn. We pay so much more attention to plants and trees in daylight hours because they're so much more beautiful in the sunshine. It’s not that we can’t see them at night, but we almost forget that they're there.’

  ‘But foremost in every apprehension?’ asked Mason. ‘How does that relate?’

  Collapsing into the nearest chair, York exhaled heavily. ‘I don’t know. That’s the only bit that’s bugging me.’

  A sudden hush fell over the Pit.

  ‘Okay,’ yelled Mason. ‘Let’s get an envelope prepped and bugged. We have precisely thirty-five minutes left, that should be plenty. If there're any volunteers to take the package out there, step forw–’

  ‘I’m taking it,’ York cut in. ‘I want to see what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘That might not even be our man down there, Nick. Chances are he’s just an errand boy. He probably doesn’t even know why he’s here. Someone’s most likely just bunged him a couple of hundred quid.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, guv, but I also think our guy believes himself so untouchable, he’d risk all just for the hell of it. This is his game, remember, an
d I'll be fucked if I know the rules.’

  *

  A warm breeze swept across the blacktop as York traversed the street. He could feel it against his face as he walked slowly forwards.

  The messenger didn’t move as he was approached; he just waited, hands dug deep into his pockets, his face obscured. There was a menacing, in-control quality about him.

  Six feet from his target York came to a halt and checked his watch. They were fourteen minutes ahead of deadline.

  ‘I have something for you,’ York said, breaking the ethereal quiet.

  From somewhere nearby, a church bell pealed out to remind the good people of London it was time to show their blind devotion. The messenger's hands remained dangerously off-show.

  ‘A package,’ he added. ‘Is it alright if I come closer?’

  Noiselessly the messenger pulled his left hand from his pocket and held it out open-palmed. York edged closer. Arm’s length away, he placed the package gently onto the messenger’s palm. It disappeared inside the hoodie.

  York took a vigilant step back as the messenger pushed himself from the fence and began walking back the way he came.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, son,’ he appealed as the green sweater passed him. ‘Don’t be a part of this.’

  The messenger didn’t stop, didn’t even hesitate.

  York raised his hand. Further down the street two sets of headlights materialised and two separate car engines popped into existence.

  Twenty yards behind, York picked up his pace and fell in behind the messenger. The green hoodie was easy to keep in sight on the quiet pavement, but as the target reached the end of the street, he ducked quickly around the corner.

  ‘Shit,’ York muttered, picking up pace. He hit the corner as the messenger climbed into the back of a black cab. Seconds later, one of the unmarked units pulled up next to him, Newport at the wheel.

  ‘Get in!’ she called.

  He launched himself into the passenger seat. ‘He just got into that tax–’

  ‘I saw him. Does he know we’re following him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  As she pulled from the curb, York heard a distinct whoop-whoop-whoop overhead. The Pit Bull had called in the choppers. Between the eyes in the sky and the bugged envelope, the messenger would have to disappear into thin air to slip away unseen.