Drawing Blood

by J G Alva

  “Your Mum and Dad still working?”

  “Both retired,” she said, sipping her coffee. “And both driving each other mad. I think this is the most time they’ve spent in each other’s company since they got married. When I was growing up one of them was always working, either Mum on a late shift or Dad on call outs.”

  “Lonely?”

  Janice shook her head.

  “Not really. I’m very good at amusing myself. Well, I suppose I had to be. I’m currently teaching myself how to play the piano. Last year it was sewing. When I feel reasonably competent at something I move on to the next thing.” She frowned. “I don’t know whether I’m trying to expand my interests or just fill my time.”

  “No boyfriend?”

  She gave him a vexed look, as if that was a question he shouldn’t have asked; maybe he shouldn’t have.

  “No,” she said, pronouncing it deliberately, and then frowned some more. “Perhaps I’m too good at amusing myself. I haven’t had many relationships. Too demanding. Too complicated.” She caught herself, and then smiled. “Let’s not talk about that. After all, I hardly know you.”

  “Just an interested observer.”

  “Only an observer, eh? I sense someone else who is also a relationship dodger.”

  “You’re right. Let’s talk about something else.”

  She laughed. It was a good laugh, and she wasn’t afraid to show all her teeth, and they were exceptionally pleasant teeth, all arranged rather nicely in an exceptionally pleasant mouth, in an exceptionally pleasant face.

  “So. Do you like working at the Children’s Hospital?”

  “Definitely. It’s an incredible job. More than a job really. Every day I absolutely feel I made the right choice to do it.”

  “A good feeling to have,” he admitted. “But I can’t imagine it’s a job everyone could do.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s hard. It takes it out of you. Like this one boy: Simon. Such a lovely boy. And it breaks your heart to see them suffer.” She sighed, and fixed him with those pretty blue eyes. “But he’s getting the best care. And he’s got the best doctor. Dr Bodel is one of those people that lives for his work, he puts his heart and soul in to it.” She paused. “Anyway. I’m just a nurse. I do what I can, what I’m told to do, but eventually the responsibility lies with the doctor. I’m not sure I’d be able to carry that load.” She looked into herself for a moment, and then came back to him, and smiled. “And what is it you do, Mr Mills?”

  He winced.

  “You’ve got to call me Sutton.”

  “I would, but it’s such a strange name. Sutton Mills. Your parents have a good sense of humour.”

  “You think?”

  “Well. Torturing their son like that. Very mischievous.”

  “Hm.”

  “Are they...?”

  Her eyes were kind.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Doing the job I do, you get to know all the different types of grief and sadness there is. When you were talking about them I got a little vibe of sadness off you. There was something in your eyes. They died some time ago?”

  He nodded, but said, “can we change this subject as well?”

  She straightened up. She seemed almost offended.

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  He put down his cup and scratched the back of my head.

  “No. It’s okay. But this day has been such a…such a damn miserable day, that it would be nice to dwell on something brighter. Like your smile, for example. That’s enough in itself to lighten my mood.”

  She took the compliment demurely, smiling shyly.

  “You say the nicest things, Mr Mills. I mean, Sutton.”

  “Do you deny you have a splendid smile?”

  “No,” she said, staring resolutely at her coffee cup. “But I have the feeling that that line has been used before. And more than once.”

  He had to concede the point on that one.

  “There are a lot of lovely women in this city with nice smiles. It would be a shame not to be able to complement each of them on it because of prior discourse.”

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowed in scrutiny. Her eyes held his for perhaps ten seconds before she looked away.

  “I fear you are a dangerous one, Sutton Mills. Charming, good looking. Kind. I get the feeling that there might be a long list of pleasant ladies with nice smiles somewhere in the background, should I enquire further.”

  “Not long at all,” he said, feeling strangely shy and defensive.

  She picked up on that; she was a sharp one, and she leant over the table toward him, intrigued.

  “Oh?”

  He was about to speak when he realised how close he was to telling her one of his sob stories. And she had said he was the dangerous one, when all she had to do was listen, and by attention and care get him to divest himself of his secrets. That wouldn’t do. She was far too easy to talk to.

  “I think I better be careful of you too,” he said.

  She was, absurdly, delighted.

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “You’re trained to be sympathetic. And men loved to be listened to.”

  “As do women. But is that a bad thing?”

  “Not at all. But when two people get on too well, when there’s an instant connection, they have a tendency to skip some of the stages of getting to know each other. And I happen to believe that all the stages are very important, and are there for a reason. You skip stages, you get trouble.”

  With a deliberateness that could not be mistaken, she said, “I’m not a woman that skips stages.”

  He laughed, and eventually she did as well.

  “I didn’t think you were,” he said. “And I wasn’t fishing either.”

  “Do you know what? I believe you. But I can’t help thinking you’re too charming for your own good.”

  “Perhaps,” he admitted.

  All of a sudden their cups were empty, and although the shopping centre was open late they both felt that change in the pattern of the day, could sense that strange tidal flow of the population as one shift ended and the next began, both workers and shoppers, and no matter how much Sutton might wish it, he had no way to keep her there, to keep her talking.

  They stared at each other, and smiled at exactly the same time.

  “This has been a lovely end to a good day,” she said.

  “Not a good day,” he said, thinking about it. Had it only been this morning that he had escaped Barrow Gurney? Impossible. “But it’s made the day bearable.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “As well you should.”

  She ran one hand along the edge of the table.

  “Would you like to see me again?” She asked. She wouldn’t look at him.

  “I would,” he said, and he wanted to, very much.

  She brightened immediately.

  “Good. You might even get a Christmas present for your troubles.”

  “I thought you were a woman who didn’t skip stages?”

  She laughed, and still smiling, narrowed her eyes and said, “you are far too charming. Do you know that? Far too charming.”

  *

  Something lived in the hole.

  In that wide opening of ruptured concrete, something moved and breathed and hunted. He knew what it looked like, even though he had never seen it: maggot-white, its skin translucent like those strange slugs and worms found at the bottom of the ocean, veins visible beneath the surface like coloured string under tissue paper; blind, like those creatures found in South American caves, its eyes unnaturally large but sightless; its size gigantic, like that of a bear, easily able to swallow him up.

  It was coming out of the hole, as if out of a birthing canal. There was no stopping it, and nowhere to hide, not trapped as he was behind this locked door.

  He heard it slither out of the hole and he turned to the door and scratched at it with his fingernails, one of them breaking off
–

  He woke in a cold sweat, in the early hours of the morning, the nightmare fading like smoke. Holy shit. His heart was hammering. He could expect more dreams about his incarceration, he thought; it had been bound to leave a mark.

  He settled back down, wondering, once he fell asleep again, whether he wouldn’t drop right back into the dream where he had left off…when Janice’s face popped into his mind suddenly.

  Janice, with that beautiful cascade of blonde hair.

  When he did finally fall asleep, his dreams were easier.

  *

  CHAPTER 13

  FRIDAY

  His home phone rang, startling him awake.

  He rolled over and picked it up.

  It was Diane.

  “Oh God, Sutton,” she said. She sounded miserable.

  “What is it?” He said, thinking: someone else is dead.

  He could not have been prepared for her reply.

  “Oh, I can’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “Gavin’s body’s gone from the funeral home. They’ve just called me. Someone’s stolen it.”

  “What?”

  *

  The funeral home on Baker Street was a converted Victorian house, and Michael Davies sat behind his desk in his office in the back and made his apologies for perhaps the tenth time.

  This was a new factor Sutton could not compute. To steal Gavin’s body made no sense. And yet it had happened. Was it simply unrelated? Some strange man with a fascination for dead bodies, picking that body in a room full of other dead bodies only at random, unaware of the tangle he had left in his wake? It didn’t seem possible.

  Beside him, Diane sat, rigid with outrage, and in the face of her anger Davies seemed to shrink before Sutton’s eyes. He was a jolly fat man in his mid-thirties, more suited to clown attire than a dark sombre funeral director’s suit. Why he was wasting his time in such a depressing job was anyone’s guess; he should have been amusing children at birthday parties, squirting water out of plastic flowers, and making animal shapes out of brightly coloured balloons.

  “We have a dedicated storage area for new arrivals,” Davies said gently, his mouth turned down as if he was suffering with indigestion. “My associate, Mr Edmunds, handled the transfer of Mr Thompson late Tuesday afternoon. I can assure you that all was as it should have been at that time. But this morning when I took the inventory I found that Mr Thompson was...missing. Naturally, the police have been informed.” His hang-dog expression deepened. “I do not know how this could possibly have happened, Miss Gable. It shouldn’t have.”

  “It might be an idea to get some sort of security system installed, I think,” Diane said acidly.

  “I assure you, we have one, and a very good one too. But somehow this...thief managed to avoid activating it.”

  “How was he able to do that?”

  “I cannot say.”

  Diane stared at him, her mouth a grim line.

  “So you have absolutely no explanation as to how Gavin Thompson’s body was taken?”

  Davies spread his hands.

  “None. All I can do is offer my apologies.”

  “I don’t want your apologies. I want his body back!”

  Davies paused.

  “As I have said, the authorities have been informed. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  Diane turned away from him.

  “Sutton, take me out of here. Please. Before I say something I’ll regret.”

  He nodded, took her arm and led her to the door, Davies hovering unobtrusively behind them.

  As they stepped out on to the pavement Davies hung in the doorway.

  “Yet again, I offer my apologies, Miss Gable. I have given the police all the details. I can only hope they will locate Mr Thompson soon. Goodbye.”

  *

  Sutton decided that, before he did anything else, he would need to find out what was in Gavin’s lockbox.

  He had absolutely no idea what might be in it…and that was the problem. He did know however that waiting for a key – a key that might never turn up – wasn’t the smartest course, certainly when he did not have anything else to go on. As far as he was concerned, it was a conundrum: it had to be important to be left to him in the first place, but his prohibited access to it didn’t make any sense.

  The enigma of its contents had stayed his hand, so far; he could bash it open himself, but he worried he might damage whatever might be inside. It needed a gentler hand. With no key, he’d need someone who knew keys, and locks: he would have to use a locksmith.

  In Cotham, there was a shop just off Whiteladies Road. A small green door was squashed between two large front windows displaying all manner of doors, doorknobs, locks, latches and deadbolts. The shop was run by a man named Tom Headley; he was in his seventies, had thick white hair with a matching thick white moustache, and a face like a wrinkled walnut. Sutton had known him since he was a kid.

  “My God,” Tom said, as he came out of the back room at the sound of the bell. He adjusted his circular framed glasses. “As I live and breathe. Sutton Mills.”

  Sutton smiled.

  “How are you, Tom?”

  Sutton took the offered hand. Tom’s hands were dry and rough, like sandpaper. Tom laid his left hand over their joined ones, and squeezed them warmly.

  “It’s good to see you,” Tom said, beaming up at him. “It’s always nice to know that one thing you helped build turned out alright.”

  Sutton raised his eyebrows.

  “Meaning me?”

  “Of course. You spent a year with me when your father was abroad. Don’t you remember? You were thirteen. Thirteen is an important time in a man’s life.”

  “I remember.”

  “So,” Tom said, releasing him and patting him on the arm. “I at least get some of the credit. You’re like the son I never had.”

  But Tom did have a son; one that he never spoke about, and one that he pretended did not exist. He did exist, but he was in Dartmoor Prison. He had turned out bad, and had murdered three people. In the three months during the trial, Tom’s grey hair had turned completely white.

  “What have you got for me?” Tom asked, nodding at the lockbox under Sutton’s arm.

  “I don’t know,” Sutton said honestly. “A friend left it to me in his will. But he forgot to include a key.”

  “You try dropping it off the suspension bridge?”

  “No,” Sutton said, smiling. “I have no idea what’s inside, so I don’t want to risk damaging whatever it might be.”

  “Give it here.”

  Sutton passed it to him, and waited while Tom examined it.

  Finally, Tom grunted.

  “Modern rubbish,” he pronounced, and then turned to head into the back room. “This should be easy.”

  It was.

  Within three minutes, Tom had picked the lock.

  “You could have been a very successful criminal,” Sutton said.

  Tom froze for a moment, before turning to look up at Sutton.

  “You know I believe being good is the best thing a man can be,” he said. “If I taught you anything, I taught you that. Anything else is a waste of a man. Now. Let’s see what we have.”

  Slowly, carefully, Tom lifted the lid of the lockbox. Tom’s hands were incredibly steady, Sutton observed, especially for a man in his seventh decade.

  When it was open, all that was revealed inside was a single sheet of folded paper.

  Tom said, “you want…?”

  Sutton lifted the paper out, unfolded it, and then scanned it quickly. It was dry, and tinged yellow with age.

  At the top was a logo for a company called Miescher Centre for Genetic Research.

  The rest of the sheet was a scientific dissertation on biological therapy. Sutton couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Anyway, it was only partially complete: at the bottom, the printer had labelled this sheet as two of four. Where were the other three?

  With dry amusement, Sutton w
ondered if he wasn’t more in the dark than before he had opened the box.

  In the top right hand corner, somebody had scrawled in pencil the legend Epstein-Barr.

  What was Epstein-Barr? Was it a person? A place?

  And was this Gavin’s writing? Sutton couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m assuming, from your expression,” Tom said, “that that wasn’t what you were hoping to find.”

  “You’re right,” Sutton said, “it’s not.”

  “What were you hoping to find?”

  Sutton sighed.

  “Answers.”

  Tom grunted, amused.

  “Aren’t we all, Sutton,” he pronounced gravely. “Aren’t we all.”

  *

  “Hello, Lifejacket,” Sutton said pleasantly.

  “Hello, Madman,” Diane replied, on the other end of the line.

  “The itinerary today is a little stop at a place called the Miescher Centre for Genetic Research. In case you were wondering.”

  A pause.

  “Why on earth are you going there?”

  “I have no idea,” Sutton admitted, “but for some reason Gavin wanted me to. I got the lockbox open, and that was what was inside.”

  “You found the key?”

  “No.”

  “Alright. Well. I hope you understand what he was doing. Because I can’t.”

  “It’s all rather baffling,” Sutton admitted, and then promised he would call her and let her know what he found out.

  *

  The Miescher Centre for Genetic Research was still operational, Sutton was surprised to find; it meant he would be chasing a real thing, instead of the ghost of something that had once existed. He was also pleased to find it was reasonably local: a small unit on the outskirts of Bath.

  Figuring that he might get more from a face-to-face conversation than a phone call, he drove to the address, which turned out to be a small, new looking, silver and glass tower. Nothing about it indicated that it was a laboratory, save for a vague aura of sterility.