Girl Seven

by Hanna Jameson

  ‘Fucking... Come on, you bitch!’

  I took the dagger out and kicked the piece of furniture. I slid the blade into the small opening between the drawer and the chest and tried to crowbar it open but that didn’t work either. I was sweating by the time I threw the dagger to the floor, snapping, ‘Fuck!’

  Sitting down again, I ate a couple of biscuits while eyeing up the drawers as if they were my mortal enemy. I’d smash them up if it weren’t for Mark noticing. It was absurd really. I didn’t even know what was in them but suddenly I had to find out. I had to find out!

  Fuck it, I’d buy him a new chest of drawers if I needed to.

  The dagger was too big so I left the flat, knocked on the door of the person living three floors below and borrowed a screwdriver. There was no one in the flat directly below, which made me wonder if Mark owned that too, for convenience.

  I returned with the screwdriver, inserted it into the lock and slammed the palm of my hand into the handle. It jammed. I wrenched it from one side to the other, moving my feet into a fighting stance.

  Another twenty minutes and something moved.

  Strands of my hair were stuck to my face.

  ‘Yes! Yes... Come on!’

  I dropped the screwdriver and wrenched open the top drawer.

  Nothing.

  Just DVDs.

  I collapsed to the floor, feeling as if I’d just swum a mile. This was crazy. If I could have looked at myself I’d think this was fucking crazy.

  Just DVDs.

  Struggling to my feet, I looked again. The DVDs were all blank but for dates written across the front in green marker. But there weren’t just DVDs, I realized; there were camcorder videos too. Everything was dated. The earliest was from the early 2000s.

  I took a handful of the DVDs from a year ago and put one into the DVD player attached to the colossal widescreen TV.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor with the remote and pressed Play.

  Maybe they were sex tapes?

  There was a shot of a darkened ground, maybe stone, maybe metal. It was hard to tell for the dust. The space was windowless and airless and I could see a foot that was maybe Mark’s; then the camera was set upon a flat surface facing outwards. Mark grinned into it, adjusted the light and said something inaudible before the sound was turned on.

  Mark backed away and revealed the rest of the tabletop and a man, naked as far as I could tell, seated, tied to a chair at the end of it. He looked much the same as any other man, without clothes or any identifying features or items. It was just a man, a man with longish brown hair, stubble, eyes wide with terror and breathing through his teeth, saying what I guessed might have been, ‘Please!’ in Russian. His voice was high-pitched and nasal with fear.

  There were no windows, no natural light, just a harsh flare coming from somewhere off screen.

  I looked down at the date on the cover in my lap.

  ‘09/01/10’.

  Mark was saying something in Russian, his arms folded. He made a slight indication to the camera and waved. The man’s eyes followed him and for a second looked directly at me.

  A brisk shout and Mark punched him in the face; he took his chin, forced his eyes back upwards, towards the face of the person the man knew was going to be his killer. He pleaded for his life again, I assumed, or denied whatever it was Mark thought he had done.

  But torture wasn’t done for an admission; it was done as a punishment...

  Mark took off his shirt, revealing a chest and torso of tattoos, arms of tattoos... He wrenched the man’s head back by his hair, pointed into the camera again and he had the same smile on his face: the one that had frightened me earlier. He punched the man in the face again, and again. When a tooth came loose he pulled it out and held it up to the camera while the man spat blood down his chest.

  Something in Russian again, something gleeful and animated.

  I’d only ever seen Mark talk. I’d never imagined this, even when he’d told me.

  There was blood on his hands, on the backs of his hands. He disappeared behind the camera and came back with a knife.

  Incoherent wheezing through the broken teeth.

  Mark shouting something in Russian and laughing. Pulling the man’s head back again and showing him the knife, holding it right in front of his eyes.

  I made as if to pause it or switch it off but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to make it to the end.

  He dragged the man’s head back and forth in short jerking movements, all the while telling him something, screaming it into his ear until he must have said all he had to say, because then he slit his throat.

  The jet of crimson partially hit Mark and for a second the man simply hung in mid-air, as his hands clawed at the space in front of him, before sagging down in the chair, head slumping forwards.

  Mark looked back towards the camera, knife held upwards by his side, moving in and out of the glare of light.

  Everything went black.

  He must edit them, I thought. He must actually go back and edit them to some sort of dramatic effect before storing them away, in this place that no one knew he owned. I doubted it would even be in his name.

  I took the DVD out and put it back in its case. I didn’t feel sick. My response was more external than internal. Inside I felt nothing but my skin was crawling with what felt like electrical current, or burning, as if I was covered in something corrosive like bleach.

  Lighting a cigarette, I took out another DVD, one labelled ‘07/12/08’.

  This one was from a handheld camera, maybe a phone. Mark had his arm around the man’s throat in front of a mirror. It looked like a public bathroom. Mark looked younger, or at least he had a different haircut.

  The man was wearing a suit.

  He spoke English.

  He said, ‘Please...’

  Mark laughed.

  The man said, ‘Please!’ again. He was English.

  ‘You know I’m going to kill you,’ Mark said in a high sing-song voice, like a nursery rhyme. ‘Then I’m going to kill your wife... Then I’m going to kill your daughter.’

  A shiver went down my spine at the childlike tune.

  ‘No, no! Please!’

  Mark slit his throat too.

  Had he been lying when he said that he’d lost count? He had kept a record of every single one. I stood up and counted sixty-four DVDs and camcorder videos, and they couldn’t be all of them. Maybe he’d lost count because there had been too many before he began filming them? He must have started young. He might have been as young as me, or maybe even younger.

  There was no hint of remorse or complication in what he did. In his mind, he saw himself in the right. To him, I could imagine that the rest of the world seemed to be the ones who were doing things wrong.

  I put the DVDs back in the drawer and listened to Alexei’s voicemail. There was no way to lock the chest of drawers again, but I reckoned it would be a while before Mark felt the need to check on them. And besides, I would be gone by then.

  ‘We will call you from outside the Underground later tonight. You will have the recorder for us then.’

  I finished the cigarette and went to bed, but didn’t sleep.

  28

  I’d be gone, I decided. Soon. Somehow.

  When I went into the Underground that evening I took the bag of money and a change of clothes. I was on edge, not meeting anyone’s eyes, sure someone was following me. The daggers were always with me now, concealed upon me under my clothes, in my boots or under my jacket. While I was working – in the sexy school uniform today, I put them in one of the lockers with everything else. None of the other girls looked at me.

  Daisy wasn’t so easy to mollify.

  She stomped into the dressing room behind me and snapped, ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

  I started at the direct address, whirling around. ‘Fuck, Daisy. You want to wear a bell or something?’

  She frowned. ‘Someone’s got a stick up their arse. Why
are you so jumpy?’

  ‘Nothing, just... Nothing.’ I pushed the bag even further into the tiny locker and slammed the door, hoping that she wouldn’t pay too much attention to it.

  She liked to play stupid, Daisy. In fact, she kinda liked it. She liked people thinking she was stupid enough to not understand the things they spoke about in front of her; it made her feel powerful. One of her favourite expressions to use amongst a group of men, that I guessed was from a TV show or movie that I’d never watched, was, ‘Well, I don’t know much about the pound sterling. But I do love fluffy kittens.’ It was said in a mocking posh voice and they always took her seriously, laughed at her, too dense to realize that she was laughing at them.

  Her hair was pulled up into a severe ponytail, making the suspicion on her face even more obvious. ‘Where have you been lately?’

  ‘Nowhere. Just taking some time off.’

  ‘I called by your place and you weren’t there.’

  ‘I was sleeping over with someone.’ I took the key out of the locker and put it in my bra. ‘So how’s things with you?’

  She stared at me. ‘You’re being really weird, you know that?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just tired.’

  A glance at the locker. ‘Well, got a load of Americans in tonight. Love it. Fucking lunatic tippers, eh? Monobrow’s about too if you wanna go see him or... you know, if you wanna go see him. He’s in the purple room with some old guys and Coralie.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, changing into my costume, but keeping the scarf around my neck firmly in place.

  She watched me for a moment, waiting for me to say something else, but I didn’t so she left. It was so hard lying to her. It made me act as if she was someone I barely even knew.

  Walking across the club floor I tried to clear my mind with the music and lights, the chatter and laughs, the drinks and naked skin. I stood to the side of the stage, looking out over the tables and bar. Daisy had added some character to the place in the last week or so by putting skulls everywhere: glittering Damien Hirst skulls and clear glass skulls and Mexican painted skulls and skulls wearing gas masks. I liked it and I guessed Noel and Ronnie approved too.

  One of the Irish girls was onstage giving a burlesque show, with blonde pigtails and flaming batons.

  Content that everyone seemed occupied, I went upstairs to Noel’s office and checked the door. It was unlocked and no one was inside. I retrieved the old recorder from behind the printer, put it down into my underwear and went back downstairs.

  It seemed like so long ago now, that time when I’d planted it, when I’d thought I was being so clever.

  I considered going into the purple room, one of the four private rooms, to talk to Noel, but I was no match for Coralie and I didn’t want to invite the comparison. A quick scan of the crowd told me that Mark wasn’t here. It was taking all of my self-control to resist watching the rest of the DVDs and recordings in the chest of drawers, fascinated by the alien side of him that I hadn’t yet witnessed.

  Smiling, I sat myself down between two Americans who were talking loudly about the CIA. They seemed to like me listening, pouring them drinks. I guessed it must make them feel as if they were educating a child.

  After a while, when I saw Coralie appear on the club floor and make her way to the dressing rooms, looking flushed, I got up from my seat and attempted to waylay Noel on his way up to the office.

  He appeared in the doorway and for a second our eyes met.

  Neither of us said anything, but he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and indicated his head at the fire door, where I couldn’t follow him if I wasn’t on my break. I gave him a small wave as he stepped outside.

  No wedding ring.

  Bored of the Americans, I returned to the dressing rooms to put the recorder in my bag, only to find Daisy loitering uncomfortably close to my locker.

  ‘Is something going on with you?’

  ‘No – hell, no. What gave you that idea?’ I moved past her to the locker to get my coat, afraid that she would see inside but unable to make a move without drawing attention to it. ‘Noel seems quiet. You spoken to him at all?’

  ‘I think it’s over, you know, his marriage thing.’ Her eyes never left my locker as I took out my coat, trying to obscure the bag as much as possible. ‘I mean for real, rather than her just leaving again.’

  I took out my daggers, sheathed, and put them in my handbag with as much nonchalance as I could muster. The recorder would have to stay where it was.

  If Daisy was right and Caroline had gone, then I couldn’t help but think it must have been something to do with me. While his wife and I had inhabited separate worlds it must have been easy for Noel to kid himself that what we were doing had nothing to do with his marriage. But after she’d passed me in the corridor something had changed. That look, in the corridor... I’d mistaken it for superiority but maybe it wasn’t? Maybe it had been a confirmation?

  ‘He’s an alcoholic,’ Daisy said, taking a file from her own locker and scraping at her nails. ‘He thinks I haven’t noticed because it’s just him and he always drinks, but he doesn’t drink like normal people. He drinks like he doesn’t want to live. You must have noticed, right? I mean, you spend more time with him than me.’

  ‘No, I really don’t.’ I shrugged. ‘Alcohol isn’t his problem, his problem is the problem. Alcohol is just a... symptom.’

  ‘And what’s his problem then?’

  ‘That he doesn’t want to live sometimes.’ I tried to minimize the statement. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘That’s not all. Something’s going on here with work as well, but he won’t tell me what. I’ve fucking needled him from every bloody which way and he still won’t say anything, which means it must be pretty screwed up. Has he said anything to you about it?’

  I didn’t buy her small talk for a second. This was her method of interrogation.

  ‘Hm, he said he was getting Nic to sort out some stuff for him but he didn’t say what.’ I figured that she wasn’t the only one who could interrogate. ‘Has Nic mentioned anything?’

  She frowned. ‘No. He’s been out a lot though. Like, every day and sometimes all night too. I fucking hate his flat on my own at night. I think it’s haunted. Mark does too. Sometimes I have this nightmare that something’s creeping round the bed with really long fingers.’

  I laughed.

  She waved a pill box at me. ‘Wanna go get a bit fucked? Ronnie’s coming.’

  I considered it for a moment, but then shook my head. ‘No, I think I’ll just head home.’

  ‘Where you staying?’

  ‘Kentish Town.’

  I smiled, but as I passed her to leave I knew I wasn’t fooling her. She leant against the row of lockers and watched me until I was gone.

  She knew something.

  When I got outside I put my hand in my pocket and it was empty. I didn’t think anything of it until I’d called Alexei and dropped the recorder with the driver a couple of streets away. It was then that I checked all my pockets again and I knew for sure that she knew something, because Nic’s drawing was gone.

  29

  She’d pickpocketed me! I almost couldn’t believe it. The little bitch must have actually pickpocketed me. Or else she had somehow got into the locker, which was a much more worrying prospect.

  I couldn’t go back and confront her, so I let it go. I had no idea what conclusions she’d draw from it, or whether she’d even correctly identify the sketch as Nic’s. But at least it was nothing to do with Noel and the Russians.

  A day went by. Two days.

  Daisy didn’t come into work.

  I wanted someone to call me, anyone, to tell me something new about DCI Kenneth Gordon. If I was going to disappear, he’d be the person I’d care most about leaving behind. But I didn’t have a choice. I sat on the floor at the foot of my bed and drove myself half crazy with thinking, but I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t leave, not without him, because
once I left I’d never be able to come back.

  Until now it had seemed a distant obstacle, but the closer this day had come the larger it had risen in front of me and now here I was, a victim of failed perception.

  I took out my mobile and called Noel, but hung up before it started ringing.

  Another few minutes of fidgeting with it in my lap and I called him again.

  I hung up.

  I scrolled through my address book and hovered over ‘Mark’ but I couldn’t tell him. He’d be more loyal to Noel and Ronnie than he was to me. There was only so much I could expect him to do. Daisy wouldn’t understand. Too much had happened. She’d tell Noel because it was the right thing to do, because I couldn’t... Even thinking of Seiko did nothing to calm me. Even if I did find her again, how would I be able to face her after everything I’d done? She’d be able to tell; she’d see that I’d changed. The killing and the lying would have painted something invisible across my features that only she would be able to see.

  But I had to leave.

  All roads here pointed to dead. I was surrounded by people, suffocating with people, but no one who could help.

  Don’t die.

  Then my phone rang and it wasn’t any of them.

  My hands started shaking the second I recognized his voice.

  I whispered, as though I wasn’t alone, ‘How did you get my number?’

  ‘You left it, remember? First time you were here.’

  ‘Oh.’ I had a vague recollection of Mark leaving some numbers but I hadn’t known my mobile had been one of them. ‘Um... Hi.’

  Leo Ambreen-King was also speaking quietly. His phone call sounded public; I could hear the movement and activity going on down the line. ‘I get a call out sometimes and... Did you really mean what you said? You can sort me out?’

  I could barely stop my words from running into each other. ‘Yes! Yes, I will. I promise. I give you my word.’

  ‘Really? You got that kind of money?’