by Adam Hamdy
‘Come on!’ Danny screamed, trying to force Wallace through the door.
Wallace resisted Danny’s efforts and glared at Connie’s killer. It was only when the masked man backed into the shadows that he allowed Danny to pull him through the doorway to safety.
PART TWO
Limbo
24
Wallace only realised it was Christmas Day when he staggered down to the off-licence and found it closed. A handwritten sign decorated with badly drawn Christmas trees informed him that the shop would reopen on Boxing Day. Wallace looked around, his eyes scouring the concrete wasteland that had been his home for more than a month. The Old Kent Road was quiet. A couple of cars drifted lazily along the otherwise deserted road. Anyone with even the most tattered social connection had better things to do than troll the streets of south-east London on Christmas Day. With his mood darkening, Wallace turned and limped along the dirty, wide pavement until he reached the corner of Dunton Road. Even the behemoth that was Tesco lay still, its massive car park completely empty. Wallace reached into his pocket for the key to the miserable guest house, a large building that had been created by knocking two Victorian terrace houses together. The brickwork was stained black and the once white window casements were grey and cracking. The place looked as though it hadn’t been touched for over thirty years, a filthy reminder of a London long past.
Inside, a narrow corridor ran from the front door to the foot of an uneven set of steep stairs. There were two rooms on either side of the corridor. Sconce, the degenerate caretaker, lived in one, but Wallace had no idea who lived in the other. The occupants of the building were a private bunch, which wasn’t surprising given that they would all have some sort of connection to their landlord, Salamander. When they had fled Victoria Street, the night of Connie’s murder, Danny had described it as a ‘safe house’. The phrase carried connotations of intrigue far beyond the reality of this tatty old wreck.
Wallace slowly climbed the stairs, which were clad in a carpet that looked like it had never been cleaned; decades of dust, grime and filth lay beneath his feet. When they first arrived, Wallace had been in such a state of shock he didn’t notice his surroundings. Blinded by despair, he was simply glad of somewhere private to vent his grief. He knew better now. When he woke crying with the echo of his recurring nightmare cascading around his skull, he took comfort in his grim surroundings. He didn’t deserve anything good, and part of him wanted to die in this filth.
When he reached the second floor, Wallace walked past the two doors that led to rooms at the rear of the building, before approaching his own. There was another door directly opposite his, but he had never seen his neighbour. Wallace occasionally heard sex noises through the tissue-thin walls, but had never put a face to such intimate sounds.
He slid his key into the scratched lock and opened the door. His room was a depressing throwback to the 1980s. Everything was floral: the peeling wallpaper, the grotty lampshade, the patched armchair, even the stained bedspread. But the flowers that had once been bright and colourful were worn and mouldy. The ceiling was yellow from years of smokers and there was a stale smell of decay in the air, as though something had died here a very long time ago. An analogue television with a wire coat hanger for an aerial offered no connection to the digital world. Judging by the ringed stains on top, other guests had used the television much as he did; a place to put glasses. Or, in Wallace’s case, a single glass. A straight pint glass that had probably been pilfered from a pub by a previous tenant. When he’d first arrived, there had been two glasses, but Wallace had broken one during a binge. If it happened again, he’d have to start drinking from the bottle.
The night they’d arrived, Danny couldn’t wait to leave. Whether it was discomfort around Wallace’s inconsolable grief, or the kid’s inherent desire to be shot of any connection to the evening’s crimes, Danny had virtually thrown the keys at Wallace. He’d been dragged back a couple of hours later by an irate Salamander, who also arranged for someone to come and take care of Wallace’s leg wound. The man Salamander sent had a twisted sense of humour, and called himself Doctor Death.
Over the next few weeks, Wallace learned that the man, who was in his mid-fifties, was really called Alastair Timson and had been struck off in the 1990s for some serious indiscretion. He scratched out a living as a physician to those who did not want the attention of mainstream medicine. People like Wallace, who wanted to avoid awkward questions about the bullet wound that had torn through his calf muscle or the other one that had sliced into his arm. Wallace also discovered that Doctor Death was an inveterate drinker. Dosed with diazepam and codeine, Wallace watched the doctor polish off an entire bottle of Scotch each evening. Wallace lay in bed and watched as the disgraced physician sat in the filthy armchair and rambled on about the miseries of the world. By the end of the night, none of what he said made any sense, but Wallace didn’t mind. The foul cloud of despair emanating from the doctor helped make him feel worse, which was fine; Wallace couldn’t dig a hole deep enough for his misery.
The drug-fuelled dreams of that first week were the darkest nightmares Wallace had ever experienced. He kept seeing Connie. The final moments as her life slipped away. The horror of her loss overwhelmed him, and the beautiful simplicity of suicide beckoned. Doctor Death was as sloppy and careless as could be expected of a disgraced alcoholic. He left Wallace with far more pain relief than was necessary. An overdose washed down with the dregs of Doctor Death’s liquor would have been an easy end. But no matter the level of deranged torment Wallace felt, he could not bring himself to do it. Even at his darkest, when his eyes burned with all the tears he had wept, and his throat was raw with lament, Wallace knew that death was cowardice – he owed Connie more than that. He owed her justice.
Every wave of grief was followed by tumultuous eddies of swirling rage that animated Wallace with purpose. After the first week, when he was steady enough to stand, he explored the area and discovered the off-licence round the corner. Tesco was too clean for someone like him, but the small shop with its ancient stock of cheap beer, wine and spirits was perfect. It was there that he’d seen the tabloid headlines screaming about a serial killer at large in London. One of them had carried a photograph of Connie on its front page, and what little emotional façade Wallace had been able to construct immediately crumbled and he fled the shop, distraught. He hadn’t returned until the following day when the papers had moved on.
Wallace spent the last of Connie’s cash getting drunk. He sat in the filthy armchair and watched shoppers flock to the giant supermarket opposite. In his drunkenness, he found some relief from the torment, and the combination of cheap vodka and his pain medication made life feel unreal and distant. He had spent three weeks drinking and brooding, and with each swell of grief there now came a slurred promise that he would find Connie’s killer and exact justice. Even in his inebriated haze, Wallace knew that the word rang hollow. There was no price the killer could pay that would ever make up for Connie. She would never have justice.
One night – Wallace couldn’t remember exactly when – blind drunk, he had been overcome with a sense of duty and finally plucked up the courage to use the phone number Salamander had found. Danny had delivered a burner so that Wallace could stay in touch with his boss and Wallace had used it to call Australia. He felt every inch the miserable drunken fool when he heard Peter and Sandra Jones’ cheery message.
‘G’day, you’ve reached the Joneses,’ they said with the faintest Australian twang. ‘We’re not here right now. Leave a message after the beep.’
Wallace heard the beep, but there simply weren’t words to express his confused thoughts, so, after a few muted sobs, he hung up. Wallowing in the misery of isolation, he knew he had no right to intrude on those people. He didn’t pull the trigger, but there was no doubt in his mind that he was responsible for their daughter’s death. They’d almost certainly been notified by now and were probably in London dealing with the consequences of his fat
al decision to involve Connie. Wallace sobbed some more before vengeful resolve took over. You can’t bring her back, he told himself, but you can punish the man who killed her.
It was during his third week that Wallace had shared his purpose with Salamander, who lived in a world of blood and vengeance and sympathised with the sentiment. Salamander’s sympathy did not stop him charging one hundred percent interest on monies loaned to Wallace. But Wallace didn’t care – he would have given everything he owned to get to the man who killed Connie. As it was, he borrowed twenty thousand pounds from Salamander, with a promise to return double that amount within a year. Salamander took five hundred back immediately; the price of a forged passport. Wallace spent another eight hundred on an Air France ticket to New York. Both items lay in the drawer of the rickety bedside cabinet. Danny had dropped the passport off three days ago, along with intelligence that Salamander had obtained from a source inside the Met. Bailey was stable, but still in a coma. In addition to the Maybury killings and Bailey’s shooting, Wallace was now wanted for questioning in connection with Connie’s and Riley’s murders. Until Bailey came out of his coma, there was no way to prove his innocence, and Wallace could not afford to gamble on the wounded policeman’s recovery.
Danny had congratulated Wallace on his scraggy stubble and dishevelled appearance – anything that could put distance between him and the clean-cut photograph that would doubtless be posted on every police and port authority bulletin board was good. Wallace hadn’t bothered to tell Danny that he’d simply lost interest in shaving and that his dishevelled appearance was the result of a hazardous mix of insomnia, booze and prescription medication. Danny had assured him that the counterfeit passport was bulletproof. The kid had given Wallace a phone number that he could use to reach Salamander if he needed help. And then with a final ‘good luck’, Danny had swept from the place with an ill-concealed eagerness to be away from the troubled, damaged man opposite him.
Wallace crossed the room and slumped into the filthy armchair. He looked out of the dirty window at the deserted supermarket opposite and tormented himself with familiar thoughts. He enumerated the ways in which he could have prevented Connie’s death. From not approaching her in the first place to insisting that they arrange to meet Riley somewhere public. All the things that hindsight screamed at him. Eventually, when the burden of guilt became too much to bear, he stood and limped over to the bedside cabinet. There, in the drawer, resting on his new passport and airline ticket, were his pills. He swallowed three diazepam with the dregs of a bottle of Scotch and returned to his chair.
As the easy warmth of the psychoactive sedative caressed his mind, Wallace consoled himself with the thought that in a week he would be on a plane to New York on the trail of Connie’s killer.
‘What the fuck is he doing?’
The words were angry and urgent, and tore through the dark fog that menaced Wallace’s mind. He opened his eyes to find Doctor Death leaning over him. An agitated Salamander paced nearby, while across the room, a concerned Danny smoked a cigarette. Wallace tried to move, but immediately felt a crashing wave of nausea.
‘He’s back,’ Doctor Death advised Salamander. ‘Can you understand me?’ he asked Wallace, who nodded as he fought back the sudden urge to vomit.
‘Ya think I need another body? Well, ya wrong! I don’t need any more fucking heat!’ Salamander growled as he rounded on Wallace. ‘What the fuck are ya playin’ at?’
Wallace was genuinely perplexed and the feeling must have shown.
‘Were ya trying to kill ya’self? Or did you miscount?’ Salamander continued. ‘Bailey didn’t send ya to me to die!’
‘I took three,’ Wallace rasped, his throat rich with bile.
‘You took twelve,’ Doctor Death informed him. ‘If Danny hadn’t found you . . .’
‘I thought I’d check in on him,’ Danny explained to Salamander. ‘I felt sorry for the bloke, not having anyone, and it being the holidays.’
‘I took three,’ Wallace protested, as the reality of the situation finally dawned on him.
‘Fuck!’ Salamander yelled. ‘Yer a fucking mess, mate. Ya keep bangin’ on about revenge, but ya too busy gettin’ fucked to do anything. I bet ya don’t even know what day it is!’
Wallace looked towards the window and saw daylight fringing the curtains. ‘Boxing Day, the twenty-sixth,’ he said confidently.
Salamander shot Danny and Doctor Death a disappointed look. ‘It’s the twenty-eighth. The twenty-eighth of December. Ya been out three days. I’ve listened to ya sob story, I’ve lent ya money, I even bought your fucking ticket, but I ain’t seen shit to tell me ya gonna do something. All I seen is a man who wants to die.’
Three days, Wallace thought. He knew the drink and drugs had insulated him from reality, but hadn’t realised they’d disconnected him entirely.
‘Do ya want to get the fucker who killed ya girl?’ Salamander pressed.
Wallace looked him in the eye and nodded emphatically.
‘OK then,’ Salamander continued. ‘No more drink, drugs or pity. Danny’s gonna hang around, make sure ya get cleaned up, and when ya ready, he’ll get ya out of the country. Deal?’
Danny didn’t seem too pleased with the new arrangement, but Wallace looked up at Salamander, full of resolve. ‘Deal,’ he said decisively.
PART THREE
New York
25
The Explorer pulsed rhythmically, its fourteen-year-old engine threatening to cut out as the revs dropped dangerously close to zero at the tail of every combustion cycle. As the heavy SUV started to shudder, the fuel injection system would compensate for the additional air that was being sucked through the cracked manifold and the engine would growl back to life. With almost 200,000 miles on the clock, the Ford was nearing the end of its life, but the old wreck suited Wallace perfectly. Parked alongside the treacherously glassy sidewalk outside the East Point Café, the Explorer drew no attention. Its black bodywork was covered with grey crystalline patterns left by salted snow, and its New York State plates had four months left to run. The rear window sported the ghostly outlines of long-removed stickers, and the fuel cap was covered by a circular version of the Stars and Stripes, all of which helped sell the illusion that the vehicle was the property of a long-settled local.
Wallace had purchased the old Ford from Seth, a bald man with a brilliant white smile. Seth ran Five Star Auto Sales, a ramshackle operation located on Liberty Avenue, a couple of miles from the De-Lux Suites, the seedy airport motel that Wallace had been shown shortly after arriving at JFK International. Seedy, run-down, ramshackle; these words had become hallmarks of Wallace’s new existence. He had no credit cards, no identification – other than a forged passport in the name of William Porter – and he was wanted in connection with a number of murders. Wallace had to be careful to avoid the mainstream and instead selected places that were so grateful for his business that they would not question the source of his cash. He had secreted the money he’d borrowed from Salamander in a leather belt, which he’d worn around his waist when Danny had put him on the Eurostar from London to Paris.
He’d caught the train on New Year’s Day, travelling with Parisian revellers who’d been in London for the huge riverside fireworks display the previous night. Danny had suggested that New Year’s Day would see a high proportion of sleepy, hung-over immigration officers, and that the Eurostar’s late start would see a high volume of passengers crowded on to fewer trains. The gamble had paid off; the William Porter passport held up, and Wallace boarded the train without incident. For all his rat-faced bravado, Danny was a smart little thug, and Wallace was grateful to have had him around.
The train journey had proved to be more difficult than Wallace had expected. It was his first prolonged exposure to people in weeks. An elegantly dishevelled couple sat across the table from him. Tired and drained by their New Year experience, they held hands and whispered to each other in French, their heads bowed together like a pair of co
oing doves. The adjacent table was occupied by four young men who were part of a larger group of twelve that had taken the tables ahead and behind. Grubby and hung-over, the men spoke quietly, occasionally breaking into loud ribaldry when recalling an embarrassing incident from the previous evening. Seeing these people going about their easy existences made Wallace long for Connie.
As the train cut through the Kent countryside, he leaned against the window and closed his eyes. He’d had three hard sober days under Danny’s supervision, but could still feel the residue of painkillers and alcohol, which magnified the effect of the train’s gentle rocking and soothed him into a sad sleep. He dreamed terrible nightmares of Connie’s death, his hands covered in her blood. The jolt of the train passing over a junction startled him awake, and, momentarily bewildered, he thought he saw Connie coming down the carriage to take her place in the vacant seat beside him. But his cruel senses returned, and Wallace realised that the woman was a stranger. As the train sped through the Picardie countryside, the stranger smiled at him and walked on, exiting through the doors that led to the next compartment.
Wallace had felt lost and alone when he arrived in Paris, but he did not allow the storm of emotions to cloud his sense of purpose. He found an Internet café near the Gare du Nord and located a gîte in Sarcelles, a suburb near the airport. He used a payphone and his moderately proficient French to call the owner, Vincent Gassot, and book the accommodation; a small studio at the bottom of Gassot’s garden. He had taken a taxi to Sarcelles, passing mournfully through the vibrant city where he and Connie had once spent such a wonderful, passionate weekend. Gassot was a greying university professor who lived alone. Wallace presented him with the forged passport and explained that he was on a two-day lay-over before he flew out to New York. The studio was a converted garage, and offered very basic accommodation, but it had its own entrance, which suited Wallace just fine. He paid in advance, which had pleased the bookish Gassot.
