Head Case

by Ross Armstrong

  ‘Just a second,’ I say, without turning my head his way, as I walk out the door and up to a woman I think is Anderson.

  ‘Hi, Tom, how are you getting on without –’

  ‘Fine. Anderson?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  She looks on as they jump into their vehicles outside.

  ‘Well… it’s all done isn’t it? That’s what it looks like,’ she says, taking a sip of her tea.

  My eyes saccade to the door, then back her. So many fast little movements and comprehensions.

  ‘In what way?’ I say.

  ‘They found his tie. The kid. Guess what? It even had his name stitched into it.’

  ‘Asif?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Results came back. The tie had the girl’s blood on it. He must’ve tried to chuck it in the river, but one of our guys found it on the bank. They’re off to arrest him now. They’ve got enough. So by the looks of it… that’s gonna be that.’

  ‘Okay. They find any iodine on the bodies? Heard iodine mentioned in any way at all? Cleaning fluid?’

  ‘No, why? They don’t tell us that much, you know how it…’

  And now her voice fades away and she can only watch on as I walk. I turn back as I go to see Mike through Matthews’ office window, still there, waiting for me to return. He scratches his head and drums on his knees. He’s going to be waiting for some time. I see the police cars driving away in the distance and I pick up my pace, dragging my body in another direction.

  Not far now. Just a ten-minute walk, I’d say. I look up at the faceless bodies that drive the cars. I’ve probably been passing them all my whole life. The difference is this walk through Tottenham might be my most important ever. The snow crunches beneath my feet.

  Ring, ring.

  My phone announces itself in my pocket, desperate to get out.

  My bare icy hand, shivering, plucks it into the cold. Number Withheld.

  Ring, ring. But I’ve no time for Rabbit, not now.

  Ring, ring. It rings, back in my pocket, until it rings out.

  Cars pass to and fro.

  Then I hear one screech to a halt, skidding a little. I see the door open and a body get out. His steaming breath covers his face in the cold wind, not that it would help me if I could see it.

  ‘Get in!’ he shouts.

  And I know that voice.

  ‘That you?’ I shout back.

  He stays there, his hand on the car door. Not venturing out into the icy metres between us.

  ‘Yeah, come on. Get in!’ he shouts again. And I walk towards him.

  Take away the context of the uniform and I’m pretty lost. I see him take shape as he taps me on the arm. Brown face, black hair, well built. Then he opens the passenger door for me, uncharacteristically graciously, and we head away far faster than I was going on my own.

  ‘How’d you find me?’ I say.

  ‘You tend to stick out.’

  This must be Aisha’s car. The seat feels different under me. He must not want to be seen in his.

  ‘They picked him up, you know,’ I say, as old red brick houses pass.

  ‘Who? Asif?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah. Who else?’ I say.

  ‘No, no. I don’t know,’ he says, keeping his eyes on the road.

  ‘So they’re going for it, Emre,’ I say.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, as we bounce a bit too fast over a speed bump and I feel the road underneath us.

  ‘That it? “Oh”?’ I say.

  ‘I mean, we’ll see. That’s bad luck for Asif.’

  ‘Yeah. Bad… bad luck… Emre Bartu,’ I say, looking in the rear view mirror. No one else on the roads for miles around it seems. He clocks me looking.

  ‘You think he did it?’ he says.

  I silently realise something.

  ‘I know he didn’t do it, and you do too, right?’

  I see the road. The houses. The abusive husband’s. And, more importantly, the one next door.

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know,’ says Bartu.

  We come to a standstill and he puts the handbrake on.

  ‘I went to see Turan. We met that guy, Rabbit, who said he’d been given the job of taking photos of the girls as they came out of school. Turan said he’d look into it all, but then I didn’t hear anything. I should’ve told you earlier. I think you’re right not to trust him.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he says.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath in through my nose. I smell the musky scent, orange to me, of an aftershave Emre Bartu doesn’t normally wear.

  ‘Come in a second, will you. I’ve got something I need to tell you.’

  I breathe in through my nose again and review my options.

  ‘Okay, Emre. Sounds good.’

  ‘Yeah. It will be. It will be good,’ his hushed voice comes back.

  ‘How long will it take? Got some house calls to make,’ I say.

  We’re still sitting there. In the parked car. Neither us have moved yet.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’

  My hand, already in my pocket, begins to twitch. I grab for something in there. Hold it tight. Press it into my palm for comfort. It feels good.

  ‘You mean… it won’t take long?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to worry about any of that.’

  He gets out of his side of the car and I pull subtly at the handle from the inside but nothing gives. He walks around the front of the vehicle. Then opens the door for me. I stand and he stays just behind me. As if he’s my protector.

  Similar skin.

  Similar build.

  Similar voice.

  Now I’m not good with faces. As I’ve been at pains to illustrate. But by the time he escorts me from the car to the house, even I know for sure that this man is not Emre Bartu.

  37

  ‘Can’t, get that girl next door, out of, my head.’

  It came to me in a rush in the end. What my subconscious had been trying to tell me. Those lyrics that my mind was playing around with, as if my body knew but my consciousness hadn’t quite twigged; that when I saw Sarah Walker, in the paper, it wasn’t for the first time for ten years. I’d seen her more recently than that.

  I’d looked the girl next door in the face the week before the bullet, when I first responded to the domestic abuse call. That déjà vu neighbour. And though a spark of recognition formed across my face, one she must’ve clocked, my brain hadn’t made the link to who she was at all. I hadn’t thought about her in years at that point, you see. I certainly didn’t know she had been missing. But she assumed I did know her, which must’ve made her tell the people who were keeping her in that house that she’d seen a familiar face. And that that face had stared back, fixing her with prying eyes. That face from a half remembered childhood flirtation that clung to the back of her mind.

  Which could be why I’ve been so closely watched recently. They’ve been attempting to get rid of me before I piece together what I may or may not know.

  The final shards fell into place and played like a picture show last night. Perhaps just a little too late. As I tapped out a song I wrote on the Casio, called ‘Girl’. An earworm that wouldn’t stop playing until it was satisfied.

  Turan takes a subtle glance around as he takes out his key. A gesture he’s clearly well versed in, whether he’s checking out who’s around on a crowded street or in a local bar when he’s doing whatever he does there, or when he steps inside this house, as he has done many times, despite the fact that this is not his house.

  The key turns and we go inside.

  As soon as I’m in and the door is closed he pushes me up against the wall. He grabs the hand that’s holding something for comfort inside my pocket.

  ‘Slow!’ he says. Pulling it up, bit by bit, but all I have is my phone.

  He checks my pockets, a real thorough professional pat down. Searching every bit of me, as intimate as he could get without taking my clothes off
, but all he finds is my wallet and keys, because that’s all I have. Nothing concealed against my ankle, or on my inner thigh, or anywhere like that, because he would’ve found it if I’d put it there.

  Then he holds my shoulders and pushes me into the wall.

  ‘Emre? You… okay?’ I say, as his left hand rummages around, doing his final checks.

  ‘I didn’t believe it at first. But it’s true, innit?’

  ‘What? Emre, what are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re not fucking around. You really dunno who’s who? Do you?’

  I let the silence run for a second. I smell the place, trying to sense some sign of feminine life. Trying to figure if they’re just below my feet, in the basement. It smells blue.

  ‘You really are a fucking retard,’ he says, gripping my neck with one hand and using the other to force my arm behind my back. It reminds me of school. It’s not violent as such, not excessively so anyway.

  ‘Retard means slow. I’m not so slow. Not anymore,’ I say, as he leads me into the living room. I’m staying permissive, but being no push over. Not giving him anything to go on either way. He kicks open the door. I think he thinks this is going to be very easy for him. There, in the dim light of the room, curtains closed to bar eyes from what comes next, stands a man in sunglasses.

  ‘Who… who are you? What’s… going on?’ I say.

  I had planned to act like this. The shock and the fear. I’d planned to do so because I’m not surprised to see this man. Turan couldn’t do it on his own.

  You see. The shape, on the car. The lipstick. Wasn’t a kiss. But an attempted bit of art. A creature. A rabbit. Rabbit, who was always around when Turan was, who was the sort of age I was expecting. Who always wears those glasses, which serve two purposes:

  One, to mask his face somewhat.

  And two, because they make it easier to come to terms with his new world.

  You see, if Rabbit has what we think he has, Miss Shelley and I – an acquired colour-blindness derived from the fact that he has had carbon monoxide leaking into his car for the last few months – then the world will have started to look like a very strange place for him too. Poor Rabbit. He could have got it fixed if he’d only taken the car in to Garrett’s Motors. They’re good like that. But then, carbon monoxide is so difficult to sense, for most people.

  I don’t need to act the fear now because when I see the ropes and the chair it strikes me that I might not get out of this. Rabbit has been waiting for me, and holds a Japanese blade they call a Sai. A dream weapon, owned by fantasists, but it’s sharp as hell. It’s not the sort of thing you’d find on the high street. The violence is not pretend. It’s a fantasy that they’ve made real. Together.

  He talks as they push me down and tie my legs to the chair. I’m not entirely sure how they’re planning to do it. But they’ll need me pacified for it.

  ‘I think those photos were so you could work out who you wanted to take. Weren’t they, Rabbit?’ I say.

  ‘You’re a nosey fuck, aren’t you? And persistent,’ Turan says.

  ‘Ahh,’ I let out a wail as Rabbit pulls the ropes tight around my ankles. He hasn’t said a thing yet.

  ‘Shh,’ says Turan, like he’s lulling a baby to sleep.

  All my theorising drifts away. All the humour. All the games. And only this dark room and the possible horrors that lie in store remain.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ I say, hearing my voice rather than speaking. I am out of control for the first time in a long time. They’ll get rid of me, like they got rid of Katherine Grady, I think. Then I stop that thought and stay in the here and now as my hands get yanked behind me, the strain of which burns my wrists and breaks the skin. My left arm, halfway between the base of my hand and the elbow, feels wet. It trickles. A wet pat sounding beneath me as they pull the knots tighter.

  ‘Ahh! I don’t know what you think I’ve seen. But I promise you, I don’t know a thing –’

  ‘I saw you. At the garage, I fucking saw you, I was watching, so don’t fuck around,’ he shouts, managing to control himself before he flies off the handle and lands a blow.

  ‘I… I… I…’ My voice strains, I’m so scared. They pull off my tie and open my shirt. Rabbit withdraws, so I only see his back. He removes his sunglasses but I still don’t see his face, not full on. He rubs his eyes and then replaces his eyewear, keeping his back to me. He jogs up and down for a second. Geeing himself up, the Sai in his hand the whole time. His fingers flex and roll around it, adjusting his grip on the handle.

  ‘I… I… shut up,’ Turan says, and this time he blows his top, punching me hard in the stomach.

  ‘I tried to work it out, I tried, you’re right, but you got me, you got me. I didn’t… I couldn’t… ’

  Turan rolls out some plastic sheeting. Soon it smears the whole living room. They’re very particular about mess it seems. They like to get away with things. That’s the thrill.

  ‘Listen to yourself. You know what you sound like?’ says Rabbit. He lifts the blade and kneels down. ‘You sound like a baby. Are you a fucking baby?’

  I analyse what a high and distinctive tone he has. One I knew straight away on the phone. He’d have to conceal that if he wanted to go unnoticed, to fool people he was someone else.

  He clutches my knee. I’m aware of my phone in my pocket. He didn’t take it.

  ‘Please…’ I say.

  Rabbit drags the blade along my trouser leg and cuts away, exposing my right thigh. I see the bruise on his cheekbone that Turan gave him during their little improvised show, to put me off the scent, in the snooker hall backroom. I see the old cut on his forehead I gave him when I smashed his head into the glass door of Amit’s shop.

  ‘No, no “please”. Nothing more from you, ever. That’s it,’ Turan says. ‘Are we going to do this then, Rabb, or what?’

  My breathing shudders as Turan lays some white powder out onto a sideboard and they both take a short hit. Rabbit rises, his tongue searching his mouth. He bends over to get a good look at me.

  I feel his cigarette breath on my mouth. I see the blue scent, rising from him like steam.

  He taps the blade on the ground. He opens his mouth to say something. Then doesn’t say a word. It’s all part of it, for him. He wets his lips.

  ‘Do it then,’ says Turan, keener on cutting to the chase and starting the bloodletting.

  Rabbit is less practical. He cares more about indulging his urges than covering tracks. I wonder where Turan is planning to lay my body to rest.

  I hear the pat-pat of the wetness from my hand below me.

  ‘By the way. What was it you wanted to show me?’ I say to Rabbit.

  Turan sniggers, as Rabbit lowers his head, then shakes it. The constructed shadow of the quaking snooker hall man drifts away. Only these darker manoeuvres remain.

  ‘This,’ he says, gently pressing the blade into my scar tissue.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ I whisper.

  ‘I think you do. But, then…’ Rabbit says, biting hard on his bottom lip. ‘None of that really matters. What matters is that I like to do this. I really… like… to do this,’ he says.

  My phone is in my pocket. As he brings the Sai down towards my leg with his left hand, he places his right hand on Turan’s shoulder, their pleasure has a mutual masturbatory element. Then I feel the pain, hot and raw as he digs the blade into my thigh and drags it across, making clean red inroads into my skin. I don’t look down.

  I steel myself and bite hard on my lip, drawing blood there too. The taste, metallic, reminds of my first kiss with the girl that brought me here.

  ‘Natalie O’Hara… Rita Singh… Sarah Walker… Aliya Akkas… Katherine Grady… Sophie Chang… Tanya Fraser… Jade Bridges… Nina Da Silva!’ I shout.

  They stop for a second. Rabbit lets out a giggle.

  I hear my heartbeat in my ears.

  ‘I knew it. Every time I turned around I saw you somewhere. It’s a good job
we kept an eye on you, too, right?’ Turan says.

  Boom, boom. A wave of blood oceans inside my head, but will soon depart for where it’s needed more and leave me cold.

  ‘Those names are your suicide note. Goodnight.’

  He nods to Rabbit and he lifts the blade as my pocket gives way and something falls out.

  ‘What’s this?’ he shouts, picking my phone up and pushing it into my face. My leg is bleeding hard onto the plastic below. Not pitter-patters but long drips, like from a drainpipe onto the tarmac after heavy rain.

  ‘Calm it down man. Just do it. Do him! Do it!’ Turan shouts.

  ‘He’s got some fucking app running, some fucking… look!’ Rabbit shouts.

  And then the front door goes. Not the bell, but the breaking of the glass.

  *

  Commotion beneath me. Women’s voices I’m sure. It’s not my imagination, I don’t think it’s that, it’s screams and then the slapping of skin on skin. Then the rumble of stamping of feet. Then they fall silent again.

  Rabbit and Turan hold still, like their feet are in cement, staying quiet so maybe it’ll just go away. But then there’s another smash and this time I call out. Rabbit rushes over to put his hand over my mouth and the blade to my throat. I don’t think Rabbit’s blade quite found my femoral artery, but I’m bleeding hard, I feel my eyes droop.

  Bang. Bang. The door is being kicked now, you can hear the strain of the wood, but it sounds like the bolts hold strong. Turan reaches for something stuffed down the back of his trousers and goes out to address it.

  I hear Turan’s shouts and the strained voice of another.

  ‘Shh,’ Rabbit whispers in my ear, and for a second there’s nothing to be heard. Then the sound of the bolts. And the front door opening. And the steps that follow.

  There is an app for everything these days, it turns out. You can set the one I’m using now to make your call at a certain time, without the phone making a sound, or appearing to have a call running at all. All I needed was something to relay what was happening in here to Bartu. My phone made the call halfway through the drive over here. Once he’d heard enough to convince him it was necessary, he made his way over to the address I gave him last night.