Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1)

by Malcolm Richards

  Emily looked up and gave him the briefest of smiles. “Thanks.”

  Behind them, waiting customers mumbled passive-aggressive complaints.

  “Back to the grindstone.” Jerome stood and for a moment was lost in thought. “Actually, now some time has passed ... you’re a teacher. Am I right?”

  Colour drained from Emily's face. “How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. See you later, Emily.”

  But she didn’t hear him. In an instant she was there again. At the school. A circle of colleagues forming a barrier between her and a mob of scarlet-faced parents, who snarled like wild dogs.

  When she looked up again, Jerome was halfway across the room. She had forgotten to ask him about Alina Engel.

  Feeling miserable, Emily pulled her coat from the back of the adjacent chair. Her bag, which had been concealed beneath it, was gone. She stared at the empty space, then dipped her head beneath the table. Everything was in that bag. Her apartment keys. Her wallet. The picture of her mother she kept in a sealed manila envelope. Like a magic trick they had all vanished.

  The air thickened like treacle around her, clogging her lungs. Her hands and feet grew numb. She stood up, pulling the chair out and knocking it into the customers sat on the next table. People were staring. Why did they always have to stare?

  “Are you all right?” Jerome had returned. He gently grasped her elbow.

  “It’s my bag. Somebody’s taken it.”

  The surrounding customers immediately checked their own belongings and finding them still there, returned to their conversations.

  ***

  Emily tried to shut out the crowds as she and Jerome crossed the street towards The Holmeswood. They were all laughing at her. Laughing and pointing. The angry note she had seen posted on the lift was gone. An old man dressed in dark overalls rubbed polish into the doors.

  “Is it working again?” Jerome’s voice echoed through the foyer.

  The old man waved a hand.

  They took the stairs in silence, with Jerome stealing worried looks as they climbed. His apartment was identical in design to Emily’s. It was strange, as if someone had replaced her living room furniture with a small tatty sofa, a cheap table and chairs, and a bookshelf half-filled with play scripts and film subscription magazines.

  “Here, sit down.” Jerome guided Emily to the sofa, then disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with two glasses and a full bottle of malt whiskey. “Drink this. It’ll help to calm the nerves.”

  He handed Emily a glass and she stared at the amber liquid. Before she could change her mind, she swallowed it down. Her insides ignited as the burn of alcohol turned her veins into trails of blazing gunpowder.

  “One more. Doctor’s orders.”

  After draining the glass for a second time, Emily felt the panic beginning to recede. Minutes later, the iron grip on her chest relaxed. She drew in a deep, steady breath.

  Jerome fetched his laptop from the bedroom. After searching online for the relevant phone numbers, Emily spent the next twenty minutes cancelling her cards. Then, she made an awkward call to Paulina Blanchard who agreed to stop by in an hour with a spare set of keys. When she was done, she handed Jerome his mobile phone, thanked him, and paced over to the window. A sad spray of drizzle clung to the glass. Daylight was coming to an end.

  “You sure there’s no one else you want to call?” Jerome asked, watching her at the window.

  Emily was quiet for a long time. She shook her head.

  “How could someone have taken my bag without me seeing? It was right there, right next to me.”

  “You'd be amazed how easily it's done. A crowded room. People milling up and down. You've got small-time thieves working in rings all over the city and the police can't seem to do anything about it because they're too busy dealing with all the serious crimes. Rape, murder, gang warfare ... I guess if you're going to squeeze all these people into one place you're going to have your fair share of problems—most of them being the human kind. Theft like that isn’t worth reporting, unless you have insurance.”

  Emily watched the tops of umbrellas moving back and forth.

  “Like I said, London’s not easy,” Jerome continued. “But you’ll get used to it after a while. All the noise goes away. You learn to push and shove. And you can choose to be as invisible as you want.”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  Jerome shook his head. “Who does?”

  Turning her back on the street, Emily thought about the contents of her bag that she would never get back. She didn’t care about any of it except the photograph of her mother. It was the only one she’d kept, and she had been saving it; sealing it in an envelope, waiting until she could bear to look at it again. And now it was gone. The only images she had of her mother remained in her mind, and they were not how she wanted to remember her.

  Jerome was talking, oblivious that she had slipped away. She didn’t want to think about her mother. She didn’t want to think about what had happened in the café. Her thoughts turned to Alina Engel.

  “Did you know the people who used to live in my apartment?” she asked, returning to the sofa.

  The question caught Jerome off guard. “You mean the married couple? A little, I suppose. Although I probably heard them more than I actually saw them.”

  “Harriet said they fought a lot.”

  “That’s an understatement! Although fights are usually two-sided. This was more of an ‘I’ll shout, you’ll shut up and listen’ sort of situation. That asshole certainly liked the sound of his own voice.”

  “What did he shout about?”

  “Hard to say. The ceilings aren’t thin enough to make out actual words. He was always pissed off about something though. And poor Alina. She’d never cry in front of him. She’d wait until he’d stormed off somewhere. I would hear her in the bathroom, her sobs coming down the pipes. And then one day, it all went quiet. According to Harriet she left him, went back to Germany. Good for her.”

  Emily leaned forward. “Are you sure that she left him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She told him about the missing persons notice in the supermarket, about the painting of Alina she’d found in her apartment.

  Jerome poured out another couple of whiskeys.

  “The police came around not long after things went quiet. Knocking door to door, asking if anyone had seen Alina. I told them about the fighting, but that was before we heard she’d left him. Perhaps Karl did report her missing but that doesn't mean she actually was missing. Maybe she thought, screw you, asshole! I'm out of this chicken shit hell hole! It would be a nice way to get back at him—to disappear in the middle of the night and make him sweat for a while. A few weeks later, the police track her down at her family home back in Germany, and it’s divorce courts, alimony, case closed.”

  Emily sipped her whiskey. The alcohol mingled with the fluoxetine in her bloodstream, leaving her lightheaded and disconnected.

  “It’s plausible,” she said. But who told Harriet that Alina had gone back to Germany?”

  “Karl Henry.”

  “Exactly. The word of a wife beater. The word of the man she supposedly ran away from.”

  “But why would he lie?”

  “If your wife went missing, why would you move out of your home? What if she came back? How would she find you? Wouldn't moving out be the last thing you'd do?”

  “Unless,” Jerome said, “she’d turned up alive and well in Germany.”

  Emily scowled. “Her clothes were still in my apartment, all bagged up. If she was planning on leaving wouldn’t she have taken them with her?”

  They were both quiet, the silence an awkward reminder that they were not yet friends.

  “Tell me about being a teacher,” Jerome said.

  Emily’s shoulders stiffened. She drained her glass. “What do you want to know?”

  “What did you teach?”

  Another long silence. Emily crossed h
er arms. She began to scratch the back of her hand. Jerome stared at the thin scars scored into her flesh there.

  “I taught English,” Emily said, quickly pulling her sleeves over her hands. The conversation had just stepped onto an old rope bridge that clung to the sides of a black, bottomless chasm. She got up again, pacing back over to the window, aware that she was acting strangely.

  “So you appreciate the arts? What were the kids like? I bet there were some real pains in the ass.”

  The ropes creaked. The knots unravelled with each step forward.

  “My parents used to despair,” Jerome said, when Emily didn’t answer. “Every day there’d be a call from the principal. Jerome stole from the petty cash. Jerome wrote obscenities on the whiteboard. And then along came Miss Davey, the drama teacher. Suddenly, I had an outlet. She showed me how to channel all those feelings. To make characters out of them. I wonder which of your kids will look back one day and say, she was the one. She got me.”

  Emily stood, frozen in front of the window, knowing that if she turned around now she would not see Jerome—she would see him, cutting at the tethers of the rope bridge with a penknife, watching as each one snapped until the bridge fell and they both tumbled into the darkness together.

  Phillip. His name was everywhere; weeping in the raindrops that fell on the windows panes, howling in the wind that whistled past the corners of The Holmeswood. In the street below, it screamed from the mouths of passers-by.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dizzy, Emily shook her head.

  Jerome leapt off the sofa and hurried into the kitchen. He returned with a glass of water.

  “Drink this. Maybe the whiskey wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

  Emily took the glass and heard ice cubes clink together, singing the boy's name. Phil-lip. She and Jerome were both silent, watching the rain slide down the window. The intercom buzzer announced Paulina Blanchard’s arrival.

  Emily turned away and picked up her coat.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

  “Will you be all right?” Jerome watched her pause with her back to him. She nodded, then walked unsteadily out of the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shafts of stark winter light pulled her into consciousness. Shielding her eyes, Emily rolled onto her side and checked the time. Ten-sixteen a.m. In the bathroom, she dutifully took her daily dose of medication, then noticing Alina’s portrait, picked it up and carried it into the living room.

  The sun had been conserving energy through the rainy days and now it sat high in a chalky blue sky, warming the street below where the tops of winter hats knitted together a spectrum of dark colours.

  Propping the painting against the sofa, Emily set about making coffee. It had been a long time since she had suffered the after-effects of alcohol. She felt weak and unsteady on her feet. Her skin prickled.

  Paulina Blanchard would be arriving with a locksmith in thirty minutes. The letting agent had reacted as expected—if thieves had stolen Emily’s belongings then it was because Emily had given them the opportunity. And of course it was unfortunate but Emily would have to cover the costs of the resulting lock changes. She had accepted responsibility without complaint, had even thanked Paulina for going out of her way to drop off the spare key to her apartment. Now, as her head began to throb with the dull ache of a hangover, she felt annoyed for having displayed such passive behaviour.

  Showered and dressed, she rode the repaired lift down to the foyer. Paulina was already waiting. An elderly man with gnarled hands was crouched down beside the open front door, letting in an unpleasant concoction of bitter cold, car fumes and city noise. It was the same man Emily had seen yesterday. She watched him remove the screws holding the door lock in place.

  “Miss Swanson,” Paulina nodded.

  She was dressed in the same fur coat. It was probably real fur, Emily thought. Real fur paid for with old money.

  “This is Bill. He’s our handyman. He’s been fixing things in The Holmeswood for forty years now. He’ll change the locks on the entrance door. Then, as a precaution, he'll change the lock on your apartment door.”

  Emily nodded. “What about the other tenants?”

  “One can't be too careful these days,” Paulina said, glancing over at Bill, who was listening in on their conversation. “You never know if those thieves intend to come back. The last thing you'll want is to wake up in your bed and find strangers stuffing their pockets with your jewellery. Most of the other tenants will be at work right now. I contacted as many as I could this morning and left voicemails for those I couldn’t reach, but I'm afraid you'll need to buzz everyone in later.”

  The woman stared at Emily, a hint of challenge in her expression, then dug deep inside her pocket and pulled out an envelope. The keys inside clinked like icicles. From a plastic folder she pulled out a printed checklist and handed everything to Emily, explaining that she would need to cross off each tenant from the list as she distributed the keys.

  “You could do a sweep of the building now, to see if anyone’s home,” she added, a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “Although don't bother with the penthouse. The tenant's abroad for another two months.”

  Emily stared at the objects in her hands.

  “Now if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment. If you could come by the office tomorrow to arrange payment. And please bring the completed checklist with you.”

  Paulina marched through the foyer, grunting at Bill as she left. When she was gone, Bill turned to Emily and winked.

  “A real charmer that one,” he said.

  He pulled the old lock system from the door and dropped it with a clatter onto the open lid of his toolbox.

  Back in her apartment, Emily tossed the envelope of keys onto the dining table and then moved from room to room, walking off the black cloud that had settled on her shoulders. She pictured the aggrieved faces of the other tenants. People didn't like change, and people certainly didn't like the idea of their security being compromised.

  Reading through Paulina’s checklist, Emily made a mental note of each tenant's name. Her memory was strong; teaching classes of more than thirty children each year had kept it exercised.

  A knock on the door heralded Bill's arrival.

  “Took a bit longer than I reckoned,” he said with a jovial smile. “Those old locks can be a royal pain.”

  He knelt down on creaking knees and opened up his toolbox, laying out his tools with the precision of a surgeon.

  “Mind you, this one right here,” he said, tapping the door handle with the end of a screwdriver, “ain’t that old at all. You know how I know?”

  Not in the mood to learn the basics of locksmithery, Emily shook her head. But that wasn't Bill's intention.

  “Because I changed it myself a few months ago. And it was smashed up good and proper too.”

  Emily's stomach tumbled and flipped. “A burglary?”

  “I don't think so. All the damage was on the inside. As if someone was trying to fight their way out.”

  Emily pushed the door until she could see the inside lock. Chips and grooves had been sanded down and repainted, but were still faintly visible.

  “In my job, I see broken locks all the time. Burglaries, break-ins, vandals ... but this one stuck in my head because the gentleman that lived here behaved like a lock broken from the inside was nothing out of the ordinary. And he called me direct, you know. Avoided old misery guts like the plague. Asked me not to mention it to her if he gave me a nice tip. Very suspicious if you ask me.”

  Emily watched him work the lock off the door with surprising ease. “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “And say what exactly?” Bill asked, suddenly defensive, as if he had been accused of a crime himself. “Nothing to do with me is it? No, Miss. I just do my job, mind my own business and at the end of the day I go home.”

  “Was there a woman here?”

  “Not that I seen.”


  Emily hurried to the living room and returned with Alina’s portrait. Bill looked at the painting, screwing up his face.

  “Like I said, not that I seen. Just the big fella. He didn’t talk much, just wanted the job done quick, no questions.”

  “Can you remember the exact date?”

  Bill put down his tools, dug into his duffel bag and pulled out an invoice book. Emily waited as he flipped back through the receipt stubs.

  “Here it is,” he said, stabbing the page with a knotted finger. “Monday, the twenty-fourth of August. Mr Karl Henry.”

  Emily drew in a sharp gasp. It was the same day Alina had disappeared.

  Bill picked up his tools again and made quick work of fitting the new lock.

  “Of course, I told you that in good faith,” he said, avoiding Emily’s gaze. “Old Blanchard found out he changed the locks when he told her he was moving out. She called me up one morning, barking down the phone, asking if I’d had anything to do with it. I told her I didn’t know nothing. You ain’t going to tell her now, are you? Make an old man lose his job?”

  “No,” Emily said. “I won’t.”

  Excusing herself, she darted into the living room, taking the painting with her. Exactly what had occurred within the walls of this apartment? She thought about the refuse sack she’d found filled with Alina's clothes. Everything she had learned so far pointed to a horribly abusive relationship that the woman had escaped from, yet something felt off-kilter, like standing in a room with an uneven floor.

  “I'm all done here.” Bill hovered in the doorway, a key chain dangling from his fingers. “There’s a spare one there. If I were you I’d give it to someone to look after. ”

  His eyes moved over to Alina’s portrait. Emily took the keys and slid them into her pocket.

  “Like I said, I’d appreciate it if you kept what I told you to yourself. Don’t much fancy being out of a job what with Christmas coming up and everything.”