by J G Alva
“Where are you going?” He asked.
“Home,” she said sadly, taking one last look at him before heading for the hall.
He got up out of his seat in a hurry. He managed to stop her before she entered the hall.
“Janice, wait,” he said.
She took a step back, a tremulous uncertainty passing over her features briefly, like a shadow.
If he was the man he said he was, if he was a man who sought the truth, no matter how unpalatable, then he would have to face the truth about himself too. Not just accept it, but embrace it.
“You’re right,” he said. “My pride was wounded. And I suppose…I was a little hurt. I’ve known women with agendas…and I’ve always had to take second place to them. I like honesty in a relationship too, but it’s a trait that very few people share. A fact that has cost something in the learning.”
He took hold of her hand.
It was warm. Her touch seemed to make his skin tingle. Without having to say anything, she raised her head up to meet his. There seemed to be a doomed look in her eyes…but he didn’t think it was a look of doom, so much as a look of inevitability. He touched her cheek, stroking it; feeling warmth, softness, and the reality of what a special woman she was. She pressed her body to his: she was all long legs and female warmth, and beneath the smell of her perfume he could smell her, her body, a delicate but distinctive aroma that was both natural and good, and seemed to stir something in him, an uncoiling in his chest, a stir of dormant muscles.
It didn’t take long for him to become aware that her body was thrumming in a way that indicated that she could only be thinking of one thing…as was he. A hand shifted down her back to her hip, an exciting journey, the hip rising, the hand moving over one buttock, that joyous rise that seemed to go on and on. Her breath, tickling the side of his neck, caught in her throat.
He tried to speak, but his tongue felt swollen in his mouth.
She kissed his neck.
He didn’t mean to, but in that moment his mouth was roughly on hers, hungry for her. She matched his hunger, and in the depths of their joined mouths she moaned. An electric thrill seemed to pass through both of them.
*
An hour later, he was still marvelling over her.
Now, lying on her front, her head turned away from him, he lightly traced the line of her spine, feeling the bumps, feeling it dip toward the waist, and then feeling the glorious rise of the buttocks. He felt sure he was close to unlocking some of the universe’s greatest mysteries, encapsulated in this bundle of nerves and muscle. The truth was more prosaic: he was a man fawning over the delectable female, but that she had instilled wonder in him could not be denied. It seemed that whatever driving force moved nature forward, editing this, adapting that, straining to become master of its environment, had ended at this, as near to perfection as could be found. Would evolution now turn off all her switches, now that it had made her, his Janice, its greatest accomplishment?
He doubted it.
But still he wondered.
She had been almost timid at first, the long-time of absence making her doubt herself, but that had quickly disappeared once she had stopped trying to act how she thought she had to to please him, and had just let it happen. He had forgotten about her hair, a glorious golden spill of it, a secret weapon that, when unfurled, had felled him as completely as any weapon of war. He felt he did not have the words to let her know how she made him feel, but this need to tell her was tempered by the knowledge that she might already know it, as did he.
It is foolish to make promises, sign contracts, or make plans on the basis of one night together, or part of a night, but that was just what he felt like doing. As he was about to speak the old, cautious Sutton reared his ugly head to silence him. Be careful, lad, he whispered, as these are shores that could just as easily bash your ship to pieces as offer sanctuary. She had lied, and he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t know her. Not yet.
But he was already in it, with her. There was no use in deluding himself. A contract had been made, and she was at the heart of it.
She moaned softly as his hands once again traced the length of her back.
Sutton’s phone buzzed mutely on the bedside cabinet, and with a look at Janice he reached over and answered it.
“Diane?”
“Sutton? I’ve got it.”
She sounded very pleased with herself.
“Got what?”
“Scott Bradley’s address.”
“You have?” He said, delighted. “How did you manage that?”
He could hear the smile in her voice.
“I thought, what would Sutton Mills do-“
Sutton smiled.
“I’m touched.”
“-So I rang the Jefferson Out Clinic and told them that I needed to contact a former patient, a Scott Bradley, because he was the beneficiary of part of an estate of a will I was dealing with. They were most helpful, after that.”
“What is the address?”
She read it out very solemnly, like a small child in front of a class room.
“Are you going to check it out now?” She asked, her voice tinged with concern.
“Um…yes,” he said, looking at Janice. God, he didn’t want to leave…but he supposed he would have to. “I’ll leave right now.”
“Okay. This is dangerous, so…it was good you told someone. Your lifejacket wholeheartedly approves.”
He hung up, and then bent to kiss Janice.
“Where are you going?” She asked, concerned.
He got out of bed. His clothes were scattered haphazardly over the floor, and he began to pick them up. Where was his other sock?
“I just found out the address of Scott Bradley,” he told her. “The man who killed Gavin. So I’m going to go and see him.”
“You’re going now?”
He smiled blandly, without enthusiasm.
“No time like the present.”
“And you won’t let the police do it?”
He sighed.
“I could…but it’s more complicated than that.”
She was silent as, in the dim light of a lamp, he dressed. The elusive sock had worked its way beneath the bed.
He turned around and saw that she was watching him.
“Sutton,” she said in a small voice.
“Yes?”
“You have to promise me you’ll be careful,” she said.
“I’ll be okay.”
“No. I mean…for me. If you got hurt, it would hurt me.”
He stopped, staring at her, but her face was mostly in shadow.
He hunkered down to be closer to her.
“Janice…”
“I’m just...I’m getting the feeling that you might be something of a risk. You know. That you’ve got this other life that doesn’t include me. And that it’s dangerous. I’m worried about you…but I’m also worried about me.”
He smoothed her hair back from one cheek.
“Don’t be. I can take care of myself. And I have no urge, in even the smallest atom in my body, of wanting to hurt you. Do you believe that?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But I just had a moment then when I thought of what it might be like if you did just...leave. Not because you wanted to, maybe, but because you weren’t able to come back. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” he said. Grief can make people do strange things.
And not all grief was necessarily about death.
“You make me happy,” she said.
“And you think you don’t make me happy?”
“Do I? Even after…”
He kissed her.
“You should know that you do. But as you may be doubting yourself, then let me just tell you: I haven’t felt this way in what seems like a hundred years.”
“Silly.” She smiled. “You’ve only been around for about half out that.”
“Funny.”
“I thought so.”
“But do you know
what I mean?”
“Maybe. But I want you to tell me.”
He smiled.
“You make me feel like the world is a good place. That the struggle is worth the end. If you’re in it.”
“That’s so nice,” she said, lifting a hand to his face. “You make me feel like that too.”
He kissed her again and stood up. He found his shirt, unknotted it, and shrugged it on over his shoulders.
“Depending on what happens…are you up late tonight?” He asked.
“Why?”
“I’ll be back later on.”
“Then I might be.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“Do you feel like you’re being teased?”
“Why are you answering my questions with questions?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“There you go again.”
She was smiling.
“Aren’t I allowed to ask questions?”
“Why do I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”
“Do I scare you, Sutton Mills?”
“Hm.”
“Little old me? Scare Sutton Mills?”
“What are you doing?”
“Now who’s asking the questions.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“This won’t take long.”
“God.”
“Hm-mm.”
“Now who’s bitten off more than they can chew?”
*
Sutton drove to the address Diane had given him, a terraced four storey Georgian house about halfway down Westbourne Place in Clifton. Scaffolding covered the front of the building, and brick dust had been partially washed away on the pavement outside. Downstairs, a window was lit, and Sutton could hear voices in conversation and see silhouettes moving behind the net curtains; all the other windows were dark.
Sutton buzzed the third floor. There was no name against the bell.
He waited but no one came.
As he was about to buzz again, the door opened, and a short young man with a beard and a flat cap came out.
“Woh,” he said, in surprise, looking up at Sutton. He shut the door behind him. Damn it. A cautious one. No chance of slipping in now. “Can I help you?”
“Is Scott Bradley in?”
“Who?”
“Third floor,” Sutton said.
“You mean, Scary Guy?” The man said. He dug out a hand rolled cigarette and lit it. “Dude, you want to stay away from that motherfucker.”
“You’ve met him?”
Flatcap nodded.
“A couple of times, on the stairs. He’s the best neighbour in the world: he hardly makes a sound, and he never complains when I have people over. But I don’t want to ever get to know him.” Flatcap took a drag on his cigarette. “Anyway, you’re out of luck: I saw him leave about forty minutes ago.”
“Are we talking about the same man? Dark hair, scar on his lip?”
Flatcap nodded.
“That’s the one,” he said. “He’s never said a word. Literally, not a word.”
He edged passed Sutton, on to the pavement.
“He’s usually out all night, dude,” Flatcap said, waving and walking off. “Better luck next time.”
Sutton stared at the door, thinking.
He looked up at the house, but couldn’t see the top of it. He stepped back. A tall, foreboding building.
But not impossible.
*
Sutton climbed the scaffolding to the third floor.
All the windows were shut, but the window frames were old and in need of repair, and it didn’t take much pressure for Sutton to push a pane out, reach in and undo the latch.
He lifted the window and climbed through.
The streetlights – partially obscured by the scaffolding – only illuminated odd squares and rectangles up to about four feet of bare floor before fading out, and there was more than four feet of space in front of him; from the echoes of his footsteps, this was a large room, with no furniture in it.
Moving away from the windows, he used the torch on his phone. This flat was in the middle of some kind of remodelling, but it looked as if the work had been abandoned not long after it had been started: the floor was bare concrete, the walls had been sanded down to the brickwork, sawn off planks of wood made strange shapes in one corner, haphazardly piled bricks filled another, and in the centre of the floor a mound of concrete had gone hard…and over it all dust, dust and more dust.
Forty feet square, this was obviously the main part of the flat, but there seemed to be a doorway into another room, at the back of the flat. Sutton negotiated his way through the discarded building materials on his way toward it.
In this other room he found surprisingly little, but it was enough to convince him that he had finally found who they were looking for.
A dirty mattress pushed into a corner. Old cereal boxes. A bucket, from which issued a foul smell. A small gas stove. Half a dozen needles, some tinfoil, and an old dirty spoon.
Scott Bradley.
And something else, on a shelf made out of two bricks and an offcut of wood: small statues or figurines, some plastic, some wood, some porcelain. Was this guy a fucking magpie?
At the end of this makeshift shelf was a porcelain dolphin.
Not the same one as the one in Gavin’s house, on top of the bookcase, but similar enough to be one of a matched pair.
Sutton’s phone buzzed suddenly.
He looked at it.
Fin.
He answered and said quietly, “Fin?”
“Have you heard?”
Fin sounded like he was standing in a waterfall.
“Fin, this isn’t the best time-“
“The BRI is on fire.”
“What?”
“Yep. I’m on St Michael’s Hill right now with about a thousand people watching it burn. I mean, fuck, it’s really going up. And our man started it.”
“Our man? You mean, Scott Bradley?”
“Yep,” Fin said. There was a moment of shuffling, and then Fin came through clearer all of a sudden. “I was in there asking a nurse some questions and he burst in and started throwing petrol about, out of an old tin can. Literally, just walked in and threw petrol over the nurse’s station. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. Then he lit a rag and threw it, and everything went up in a big woosh. He didn’t even wait for the nurses to get out of the way. One nurse, I don’t know who she was, her arm and face were on fire, I mean, my God, she ran passed me and she was screaming, it was just fucking horrible, I…I’ve never seen anything like it…” Fin seemed lost for words in that moment. “Honestly, Sutton, I couldn’t do anything. If I could have done anything-“
“Fin, it’s alright.”
“You know me, I’m not good at that heroic stuff, I mean look at me, a pipe cleaner has probably got more gumption-“
“Fin, it’s okay, you did the right thing.”
“I just ran out with everybody else, Sutton. I had to. There was like a wall of people anyway, a wall of people screaming, and I could see him behind them all…Jesus.”
“And you’re sure it was him?”
“Sutton,” Fin said, and then paused. “I saw his face. He’s…he’s mad. I mean, the last I saw of him, before everybody got into the lift, was that he was on fire. And he didn’t seem to care. Security had come up and were shouting at him but they couldn’t get to him through the flames…The whole place was going up faster than you can say London Bridge. And now looking at it…” There was a pause. “The top two floors are gone. The fire brigade are here and they’re starting to hose it down, but it just doesn’t look like they’re doing anything. I think the whole thing’s going to burn down. You should see it, the street is full of people on stretchers or hospital beds or walking around with IV drips…I just hope to God they got everybody out.”
“Did he get out?” Sutton asked, after a pause.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don�
�t see how he could have. Last I saw of him, he was trapped. And he was burning…I don’t know if he was overzealous or not thinking or just plain nuts, but the fire was already too big for him to get through, and he was surrounded.”
Suddenly, her name popped into his head: Janice.
And with it, a totally irrational fear.
Janice at the hospital.
Burned.
“Fin, I’ll call you back. Two minutes.”
“Sut-“
He hung up, and then dialled Janice’s mobile.
And prayed to God that she hadn’t visited the hospital for any reason.
He had just left her. She wouldn’t have had time –
The phone was picked up.
“Sutton?”
“Janice, thank God. I thought you might be at the hospital…”
“I’m not, I-“
“The BRI’s on fire,” he said. “Scott Bradley went in there and started setting light to everything.”
A shocked pause.
“My God. Why?”
“I think,” Sutton said slowly, “I think, it’s because Bodel is getting ready to run.”
“So…why burn the BRI?”
“To cover his tracks? Or cause confusion? Nobody will know if he was in there working or not and by the time people realise he wasn’t he’ll be overseas somewhere, continuing his research.” Sutton breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God you’re still at home.”
“But I’m not,” Janice said.
“We need to-“ He stopped. “What?”
“I said, I’m not at home,” Janice said. “I’m on Elmdale Road. I think I figured out where Bodel’s secret lab is. I found an old article about him, an article about his pioneering work, and he mentioned that he did a lot of work in a lab he’d had made up in his house.”
“Janice, damn it, what are you doing? I told you to stop investigating. This isn’t a game-“
“Sutton, this is it! If we get his lab we get him. All his stuff will be there, whatever he’s concocted that allows Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma to develop in his patients will be there. Gavin’s body will be there. Then all-“
Her voice was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass, and then a terrified scream from Janice, and then a thump, and then the phone went dead in Sutton’s ear.
