Alias

by Cari Hunter

  A brief flick through the second file provides copies of their criminal records. These are extensive and varied, but none of the men have clocked any major prison time, and a disproportionate number of cases against them have collapsed before reaching trial. Donald Hamer, the eldest of those photographed and the founder of Hamer & Sons, has no record at all. A Manchester-born-and-bred father of five, his home shopping company has flourished despite the recession and Brexit and stiff competition from the online giants. He employs more than eleven hundred staff at his main distribution centre in Ardwick, and I was one of them.

  According to file #M342, I started working at the Ardwick branch just after New Year. Months of tedious, diary-like entries record order picking for ten-hour shifts—household goods, DIY, home entertainment, and clothing. I’ve noted the names of team leaders and colleagues, shift patterns and departments, but the most exciting incident I come across in fifty-plus pages is an ambulance being called for a lass with bellyache. Most of the employees appear to be Eastern Europeans, and I usually work on DIY alongside Jolanta and a lad called Krzysztof Janicki.

  Stifling a yawn, I hold up a colour photo of Jolanta and Krzys. It looks like we’ve gone out for a few drinks after a shift, and Jo and Krzys are laughing for the camera, pints in hand. I find his background check a few pages later. It’s unremarkable, but there’s a mobile number listed for him, and his home address is just down the road in Longsight. I copy everything onto a notepad and clip the photo to it. Finding his face among all these strangers is like a shot of caffeine, and I continue to skim read the day-by-day reports, scanning for anomalies or breaks in the routine. Nothing untoward happens until eleven months into the assignment, and then two events occur almost simultaneously: Jolanta begins a new shift pattern, and Krzys and I are transferred to a different team, a transfer that apparently comes with a two-hundred-pound-a-month pay rise.

  The file ends there on December 12, and I grab the final three, but my efforts to arrange them chronologically are hampered by my abandonment of the journal format. In its place are notes of companies and individuals, their names set against a series of numbers and letters, all rendered in a variety of colours. At no point have I included a key to my inscrutable coding system. I must never have imagined needing one.

  “For fuck’s sake!”

  I launch the third file from my knee and kick it to the floor for good measure. It’s only as the room starts to blur that I realise my fit of pique will have consequences. The ceiling spins and dips as I smack my head back onto the pillow, and I close my eyes, waiting out the spike in my blood pressure and the pounding at my right temple. A sudden deafness on that side is gradually replaced by my usual tinnitus, and I scrub tears from my cheeks, alarmed by how fragile my recovery seems to be. Scared of moving, I stare at the lampshade above me and try to make sense of the information in the files.

  I start with the basics. MMP clearly suspect the company of being a front, which means that the Hamers are probably distributing more than cordless drills and smoothie makers.

  “Oh shit!” Gritting my teeth against the pain in my head, I grab my notepad and bedside phone and dial Krzys’s mobile number. It starts to ring. “Come on, mate,” I mutter. “Come on, please pick up.”

  Krzys changed shifts when I did, moving onto the team that prompted me to collate a mass of incomprehensible rainbow-themed data. His name, image, and contact details may have been seen by the man who broke into my other flat and assaulted me, and it’s obvious from my journal that Krzys and I were friends.

  The phone clicks to an answering service, but I don’t leave a message. What the fuck would I say?

  * * *

  I lie awake for most of the night, snatching the odd few minutes of restless sleep between long, sweat-soaked hours spent fretting. I don’t phone Krzys again. I can’t risk my home number making multiple appearances on his call register. At four a.m., too antsy to stay in bed, I photocopy the colour-coded pages using my printer. I make notes of anything that strikes me as significant, half-filling my pad before I hear Priti’s alarm go off next door. She starts the shower, and I tidy my room while the hum of the boiler provides cover. I’m back in bed, impersonating the newly woken, when she peeks round the door.

  “That time already?” I ask, adding a yawn for extra effect.

  “Yep.” She sits on the bed and rests her hand on my thigh. “You look like hell warmed over. Stay put and I’ll fetch you a brew.”

  I don’t argue. I feel as awful as I apparently look, and I have to use both hands to steady the mug of coffee she brings me.

  “Bad night?” she asks.

  “Mmm.” The coffee is too hot to gulp, but I do my best. She’s made it strong enough to wake the dead. “Everything’s a bit cockeyed. I mean, this is my actual bed, but I feel like a guest here.”

  “That’ll change once you’ve got your bearings.” Her keys jangle as she tugs them from her pocket. “I’d best get a wriggle on. I’ve left you all my phone numbers, and there should be enough food to tide you over. We can do a proper shop tonight if you want.”

  “Priti?”

  She looks at me, chewing through the gloss on her lower lip. “What?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She kisses my cheek and then rubs away the smear of makeup. “You’re not fine. Don’t give me that crap. You’re pale, and you’re shaking like an alky. You need to stay in bed and…well, just stay in bed. Watch Jeremy Kyle and Cash in the Attic and eat chocolate. You’ve lost far too much weight.”

  I’ve taken her hand halfway through her outburst, and I use it to pull her into a hug. “Okay, so I’m not fine just yet, but I will be,” I tell her. “Please don’t worry.”

  She sniffles into my neck but eventually releases me. “Feet up. Telly. Chocolate,” she reminds me. “I’ll be home about seven.”

  I plump my pillows and make a show of getting comfy. “I promise not to have your tea ready or anything.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  I track her footsteps down the hall, followed by the click of her key in the lock. Her car starts first time, and she leaves the engine running while she scrapes the frost from her windscreen. As the pebbles on the driveway crunch beneath her tyres, I’m already on the phone, ordering a taxi to Longsight, and shimmying out of my pyjamas.

  The pip of the taxi’s horn sends me pelting to the front door, a shower-damp Pavlov’s dog with my shirt half-buttoned and my trainers unlaced. The taxi driver, bloodshot and bleary at the end of his shift, doesn’t bat an eyelid at my state of undress. He drops me outside the address I give him—five doors down from where I actually need to be—and pockets my tenner without offering change.

  There’s a light on at Krzys’s house, but the terrace has been split into flats, and I’m not sure which window is his. I press the buzzer marked “K. Janicki.” If he’s still working the same shift pattern, he’s on an early today, so he’ll probably be getting ready to catch the bus. I wait two minutes and buzz again, stepping away from the door to watch the front windows for signs of life. When I buzz for the third time, a face appears at the ground floor bay, the curtains parting properly to reveal a black woman who glowers at me as she ties a cord around her dressing gown.

  “I’m looking for Krzys,” I mouth, exaggerating each syllable and pointing to the relevant buzzer like an imbecilic mime.

  Still shooting daggers at me, the woman swipes her curtains shut. Her silhouette stoops and then disappears, and I kick the step, debating my next move. I’m about to head back to the telephone box I’d spotted on the main road when I hear the front door open. The woman doesn’t look any friendlier in the flesh. She folds her arms, her ample form filling the doorway.

  “You family?”

  “Uh. No.” I’m too sleep-deprived to concoct a cover story that would factor in my obvious injuries, an unpredictable timeframe, and a choice of identities. Conscious of the slippered foot tapping a beat on the step, I default to the simplest option and
hope she doesn’t recognise me from the news. “I’m a friend of his. I work with him at Hamer’s. We usually get the bus together, but he’s not been answering his phone.”

  Her stance relaxes a fraction. “Shouldn’t you be off sick?”

  “Yeah,” I say, cradling my casted arm. I left in such a hurry that I’ve forgotten my sling. “But this is my third strike.”

  The woman nods her understanding, sympathy replacing the hostility in her expression. “That bunch of louts wouldn’t know an honest day’s work if it bit them on the arse.” She ushers me into a foyer littered with junk mail, where the smell of fried food is thick enough to make my skin feel greasy.

  “I haven’t seen Krzysztof for at least a week.” Her gaze strays to a door off the first-floor landing, and she pulls a key from the pocket of her gown. “I keep this for him, but I been too scared to let myself in.”

  “That’s understandable,” I say, pondering the legalities of searching his flat under less than bona fide circumstances. My concern for him quickly overrides any procedural heebie-jeebies, however, and I take the plunge. “Would you like me to come in with you?”

  She hands over the key and follows a couple of steps behind me as I walk up the stairs.

  “I knocked on a few times,” she says. “I got duff knees, so I don’t get out much, and he used to do odds and sods for me: pick up my shopping, pay my gas and leccy.” She bends double at the top, panting for breath. “I couldn’t smell nothing when I knocked. I had a neighbour go that way one time, and you never forget the stink.”

  “I can imagine.” I pause with the key poised in the lock, my fingers slippery around the metal. I can’t smell anything other than congealed fat, but still I brace myself for that putrid hit of decomposition.

  “Krzys?” I call as I push the door wide. No swarm of bluebottles assails me, and my first cautious breath detects only a faint floral trace from a plug-in air freshener. The flat is silent and secured, its windows shut and its curtains drawn. Walking through each of its four rooms in sequence, I start to spot gaps here and there: toiletries missing from a shelf above the bath, a space in a row of shoes, a hook where a winter coat may have hung. As his neighbour sinks onto the sofa, I cover my hand with my sleeve and check his bedroom for his wallet, keys, passport, and mobile. I can’t find any of them, and the half-empty drawers suggest he packed a bag before he left. There’s no sign of a struggle or of haste. His bed is made, and the flat is tidy. Whatever prompted his departure, it doesn’t seem to have thrown him into a blind panic.

  “Perhaps he went to visit his family,” the woman says, fanning her face with a copy of the Manchester Evening News. “Why wouldn’t he have told me, though? He knows I’d worry.”

  I’m wondering that as well, but it’s easier to sidestep the question and store it for later.

  “Do you have a number for his parents?” I ask. I haven’t seen an address book, and there’s no landline handset with a convenient directory.

  “No, I think he kept everything on his mobile. No one writes nothing down these days.” The movement of the newspaper halts mid-swing, and I catch the date on the front page as her hand slows: it’s ten days old. “Should we report him missing to the police?”

  I pretend to consider this for a few beats and then shake my head. “I’m not sure what we’d tell them. That we’re worried about a grown man who looks to have taken off on his own accord? I mean, there’s no sign of a struggle, and he doesn’t have any mental health problems, does he?”

  “Not that I know of. He was always cheerful.”

  I sit on the edge of the coffee table, facing her. “I think he’d be very low priority for the police, then.”

  She nods, her cheeks puffing out as she exhales.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Deirdre.”

  “I’m Rebecca.” I shake her hand and gesture to my cast. “I smashed my mobile when I did this, and I’m still waiting for the insurance to pay out. Do you have a number I can reach you on?”

  She scribbles her home number on a corner of the MEN and tears off the scrap.

  “Do you really think he’s okay?” she asks as she closes his front door.

  I don’t know what to think, and I’m tired of lying. “I’ll phone you the minute I hear anything,” I say.

  Her face falls, and her bottom lip begins to quiver. I probably should have lied.

  * * *

  I never did make a to-do list, so I start one on the bus home, and phone a locksmith en route. He arrives bang on his appointment time. I provide the requisite brew and make myself scarce, firing up my personal laptop and then staring baffled at the logon screen for my online banking account. Convinced I will have written my account number and password down somewhere, I combine two outstanding tasks and scour the rest of my bedroom for them.

  My MMP warrant card and ID badge are my first notable discoveries. I hold the badge in front of the mirror, comparing its photo to the current me. The nose ring is noticeably absent from the photo, as are the blue highlights, and my right eyebrow lacks its current scabbed-over split. Otherwise, nothing much has altered. I’m a few years older now, and I have a bald spot to grow out, but I doubt that my role as Rebecca deviated wildly from my norm. Priti told me I’ve had the piercing for years; Shelley and I made a drunken pact to get them done in a two-for-one deal.

  To his credit, the locksmith withholds comment when he finds me sitting cross-legged beneath my desk, tapping its underside. I write him a cheque from the account I can’t access and do my best not to look like a shifty chancer as I hand it over.

  Distracted by thoughts of a coffee break, I’m mooching through the Fs on my alphabetically arranged CD shelf when a slip of paper flutters from a lyrics insert. Written on it are email addresses, various website logins, and all the necessaries to access two bank accounts. The latter information sends a sudden lurch of self-doubt through me—why would I need two accounts?—but one turns out to be a current account for my wages and bills, and the other an online saver offering a better rate of interest. I log on to the first as my blood pressure settles and my ear stops shrieking. Thirteen months of almost untouched wages have left me with a healthy balance, and I do a spot of transferring between the two accounts before going to the Auto Trader website.

  I sold my car prior to embarking on my UC assignment, a decision Priti attributed to my fondness for method acting, though I suspect it had more to do with a clapped-out engine that wouldn’t have survived a year of stasis. Relying on public transport might have been fine for Rebecca, but for me it’s an impractical pain in the arse.

  The Pakistani chap flogging an eight-year-old automatic VW Polo in Longsight can scarcely believe his luck. I don’t question the rattle it makes whenever I turn right, and he doesn’t question whether I should be driving with one arm in a cast. His grin shows all his teeth as he shakes my hand, and then he seems to have a fit of conscience and knocks off three hundred for cash. I arrange collection for the next day, once I’ve sorted out insurance and persuaded my bank to part with a couple of thousand.

  My stamina waves the white flag on the way home, so I doze in the taxi and reward myself with a proper nap after lunch. The phone wakes me as I turn over, three new messages on the answer machine indicating I’ve been sleeping with my deafer ear uppermost.

  “SMIU want your files,” Wallace tells me. “And they want to arrange a meeting with you ASAP. Can you bring the files in this afternoon? That might keep them sweet.”

  They can have the files, but I’m buggered if I’ll make things easy for them. “Send a taxi on their account and I’ll come in. I want my mobile as well. If they’re not finished picking it apart, tough shit.”

  “They’re finished,” he says. “There wasn’t much on it.”

  I can’t dispute that, but there’s a principle at work here, and I refuse to simply roll over and play dead.

  “I’ll pass on the message about the cab,” he continues. “I’m sure
they won’t quibble, so be ready within the hour.”

  The taxi driver beeps his horn twenty-three minutes later. After telling him to leave his meter running, I continue to double-check the files for anything I might have missed and rack up a bill for thirty-five quid.

  The MCT are based at Belle Vue police station, a recently rebuilt four-storey with standardised royal blue trimming. Wallace meets me at the entrance, visitor’s pass in hand, but I’ve brought my warrant card and ID, and the chap on security waves me through. The station is a warren of starkly lit, fusty corridors. Some of the doors are pass-card protected, others bear the warning “Graphic material is viewed within this unit,” but most are propped open to provide glimpses of standard office life, except that these offices come with incident boards and mug shots and employees whose families sometimes forget what they look like.

  The MMP grapevine has apparently been working overtime, and I get a mixed response from the people we pass. A scant few of them offer supportive nods, the ones on the fence avert their eyes, and there’s outright hostility from those who have already made up their minds about me. For the most part I keep my head down, walking quickly and focusing on the fake leather peeling off Wallace’s shoes. MMP are a family; that’s one aspect of the job I’ve always loved. I just never expected to be the reckless young daughter who’s shamed their good name.