by Emmy Ellis
“You will?”
“Yep, we will.”
“I couldn’t get through before. I tried, but it was too hard, and then the others came, and they said you were the one to speak to, and I tried again. Every day I tried, and tonight was going to be my last time and…”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be able to move on now.”
“Yes, but…God, I can’t even tell you what’s bothering me. You’ll see when you get there.”
“What? What’s bothering you?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s vanity. Shouldn’t be letting it affect me now, not when it isn’t important. I’m not there, am I? I’m…here. Somewhere else. That body isn’t…me.”
Oliver waited for more, blowing on his coffee then drinking. There was hardly a rush if Simon had been there a while, was there? Still, a sense of urgency gripped him suddenly.
He went upstairs and rang Langham.
“Morning already?” Langham said.
“No. Someone spoke to me.”
“Aww, shit. Fuck’s sake!”
“Someone from Queer Rites.”
“What?”
“Not a new one. Don’t worry, they haven’t got a second group doing that shit.”
“Thank fuck,” Langham said. “Who is it? Where?”
Oliver dressed one-handed. “Some bloke called Simon. He’s in that orange place off Gainsborough Avenue.”
“The old storage warehouse? They were pushing their luck using that.”
“Doesn’t look like they did, does it? Simon hasn’t been found—if he was, we’d have known about it.”
“True, but you’d have thought… I know the place went bust, but you’d think people would have visited it to buy it. Prime place for business, that.”
“Obviously not.” Clothed now, Oliver strode towards the bathroom. “Are you going to shift your arse out of bed so we can get there?”
“Yeah, yeah, give me five more minutes. I need to call it in anyway. Besides, it’s not like we don’t know who put him there, is it?”
* * * *
Those bastard lights refused to change again, no one in front of them waiting to turn into the retail park, and no one behind. Yet the red light remained, staring down at them like a strange, knowing eye. Oliver sighed, trying to hold in his irritation. There was no rush this time, but a sense of getting there fast for the spirit’s sake had got hold of Oliver. What if them finding Simon was the only way he could move on? What if, now the killers had been apprehended, this was the last link for Simon, the last thin thread keeping him here? Oliver wanted to help the man let go.
Langham turned onto Gainsborough Avenue, ignoring the turnoff to the left for the retail park, and climbed the steep hill road where the orange warehouse sat. Oliver stared at the monstrosity, its colour rendered a dull, rusty red with the moonlight shining behind it. The rear of the flat roof had treetops peeking over. A car park was at the back, he knew that as though he’d been up here before, enough space for a hundred or so cars. A forest spread out from its far edge, where the foxes lived, no doubt.
As they drew closer, Oliver made out the blue streaks of light from the roofs of other officers’ cars, cutting intermittent swatches in the darkness, bringing the bright orange of the warehouse front into view. There was a second or two where it seemed as though the whole world had held its breath before sighing, a signal that everyone could proceed. Langham steered left and parked beside two police cars there, switching off the engine and taking a deep inhalation.
“Ready?” he asked, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Not really. Never am, but not to worry.” Oliver got out, his legs heavy, his body weary but his mind fully alert. He closed the door, the sound a slam in the eerie quiet. He followed Langham to four uniformed officers standing outside, a set of their car headlights casting them in a white glow.
“We waited for you, sir,” one of them said, a blond, six-foot-or-so man with a thin moustache that looked like it couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to grow thicker or not.
“Right.” Langham went to a set of glass doors. “Anyone find out who owns this place?” he called back.
“Yes,” a black-haired officer said, “but they’re on holiday.”
“You checked for other entrances?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. One at the back. Padlocked roller door. Some windows up top, too high to get to without a ladder.”
“Anyone got a rammer in their boot?”
“Yes, sir,” Officer Blond said.
“On you go then.” Langham nodded to him. “Break the glass.” He walked back to Oliver, took booties out, and handed over a pair. He put his on. Then came the gloves. “How the fuck did they get in if the back’s padlocked?”
Oliver shrugged, covering his boots. “Maybe they broke it then put another on there?”
“But what about an alarm?” Langham toyed with his chin.
“Might not have one. I’d say it’s empty. Nothing to steal.”
“Yeah, but still. There’s an opportunity for vandalism. Squatters. The owner isn’t bothered about that?” He shook his head. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it. Owner supposedly goes bust, is skint, then fucks off on holiday?”
“You think the owner could be involved?”
“No idea. Needs looking into, though.”
Two stout barks of sound, then the shattering of glass further twanged Oliver’s nerves. No alarm went off—that answered one question—and Officer Blond propped the rammer against the wall then reached inside to open the door. It must have been kept secure with a simple knob mechanism that turned and clicked the lock into place, because the door opened when Blond pushed it inwards. Maybe the owner locked those doors from the inside and left the building via the rear roller. There was no keyhole here.
Langham went to his car and opened the boot, returning to Oliver with two torches. He handed one over to him. “Just in case the electricity’s been switched off.”
As it happened, it hadn’t. Blond was inside and had turned on the lights.
“Right.” Langham motioned for Blond to come out. “This is just a search for a body, nothing else. You find it, you call out. Don’t touch. Watch where you step for scene contamination purposes.”
The four officers nodded and disappeared inside, booties and gloves on. Langham and Oliver followed. The reception area had cream-painted walls and a plain teak desk with one ratty grey chair behind it. A dirty, white-painted door to the rear probably led to a staff room or toilet.
“We’ll check through there later,” Langham said. “May as well search the main part first.”
Through double opaque plastic doors, the kind that swung and slapped shut in hospitals, was a long corridor with separate storage rooms to their right. Each space was divided by a wall, every one of the doors open, suspended like knobbly metal rolls of carpet at the top. The storage rooms didn’t reach the ceiling. They walked along, peering inside each one. At the end, another hallway stretched to the rear, and more rows of rooms and aisles in between started to their right. Oliver imagined that from above it would resemble supermarket aisles, except here the goods weren’t on show. Down the second aisle, the four officers went in and out of the rooms.
“May as well make a start on the third row,” he said.
Langham nodded, shouting for the uniforms to take row four next, and every even row after that while Oliver and he took the odds.
It wasn’t until aisle nine that Oliver felt weird. The hairs on his arms rose, those on the back of his neck quickly following, and his mouth dried. His skin prickled painfully, as though someone stabbed him with a million pins at once. “Down here,” he said, tugging Langham’s arm.
He led him three doorways down and saw, in his mind, the image of a young man standing at the rear of a room, twenty or so naked men in front of him, preventing any escape. Jam-packed, they were, only the bodies of the first row visible, the rest just a sea of shiny heads. The men hummed, the sound of
their unified noise filling the small space, an angry swarm of wasps ousted from their nest. All those men versus one… Even if Simon hadn’t been blindfolded with his wrists tied, he hadn’t stood a chance.
“They forced him in here,” Oliver said and jerked his head at the room beside them.
“So where the hell is he?” Langham stared into the room for a while then went in.
Oliver remained in the doorway. “I don’t know. I saw him in my head, in this room, with them doing that humming shit, but after that…”
“Concentrate!” Langham said, looking over his shoulder.
“I have been!” Oliver closed his eyes and shut out the sound of Langham pacing. “Simon? Are you here? Can you help me to find you?”
No answer.
The image of a body, chained to another form of pole, filled his mind. He got an impression of stairs and immediately darted to the end of the aisle, calling out to Langham, “Quickly. Over here.” He followed his senses, rushing to the rear of the warehouse where a set of metal stairs rose to a veranda that appeared to have no use whatsoever. Had it been used as a lookout at some point, the owner keeping tabs on customers in the car park during busier times? Oliver took the steps two at a time, his boots clanking on them, then stood on the veranda, staring out over the warehouse.
Langham joined him.
“There’s nothing but room tops and aisles,” Oliver said.
“What?” Langham frowned. “Of course there isn’t. What did you expect? Simon to be sprawled out on top of one of them?”
Oliver peered down at the officers still checking the rooms. They reminded him of ants, busy, intent on their mission, probably secretly hoping they were the ones to find Simon, yet at the same time hoping they weren’t.
“Where the fuck are you, Simon?” Oliver said quietly.
“Behind you.”
Oliver swivelled. A row of windows. “I don’t see you.”
“That’s because you’re in the wrong place.”
“What? You said the orange warehouse.” His words echoed.
Langham rolled his eyes and shook his head, muttering something about useless information and a waste of police time, not to mention disturbing his sleep. Oliver let the testiness slide.
“Yes, I was there, but I’m not there now.”
“I can bloody see that! Where are you?”
“Foxes? Think about it…”
“Fuck,” Oliver whispered. “He’s out the back.”
“The back?” Langham leant towards one of the windows in the row and stared out into the darkness.
“Shit, I think I see him,” Oliver said.
“Where?” Langham squinted.
“Not out there, it’s too dark. I see him in my head. They chained him to a tree.”
* * * *
ONE WEEK LATER
“I still can’t get over finding Simon like that.” Oliver slid Langham a baguette across the desk.
“Like what? Is it because you’re used to seeing the corpses fresh?” Langham pulled the clear wrap off and took a healthy bite. Mayo sat in one corner of his mouth, but he licked it away.
“Yeah, there is that, but I meant him having no cock.” Oliver winced at the memory.
Langham swallowed, pointing at his food as if to say the conversation wasn’t ideal at the moment. “Um, yeah, that was rather nasty.”
“Still…” Oliver opened his own food. “At least it was ripped off after death, eh?”
“Bloody awful,” Langham said.
“Bloody foxes.”
“Indeed.”
They ate for a minute or so in silence, the visuals in Oliver’s head souring the taste of his food. He pushed the images aside and thought about what they had to do next. Langham still had the final bits of paperwork on Simon to file, then they could go home.
“Excuse me? Can I trouble you for a second…”
“Oh, fuck me…” Oliver raised his hand so Langham didn’t speak. “Yes, love, carry on.” He waited for the female to speak again, wondering what the bloody hell was about to come their way now.
“It’s just that I’m in this flat and I can’t get out.”
“Um… Are you alive?”
“I have no idea. I just know I’m in this flat, and every time I think I’m dead, I wake up again.”
“Where is this flat?”
“See, that’s the thing. Again, I have no idea…”
Oliver looked at Langham and smiled apologetically.
“Fuck it,” Langham said. “You put me off my bloody lunch talking about men’s cocks being torn off anyway. What’s next? Lay it on me.”
