She studied him wide-eyed. After glancing down at her body, naked but for her panties, she looked at him again, her eyes burning. She snapped her head back and forth and tried to move her feet to kick out, but they were caught in her suit pants. The movement only caused her to bounce up and down again, giving Billie even more pleasure. He moved about her with the blade in front of him. Resting the cold steel on her cheek, he leaned closer and smiled, then ran the cutting edge between her breasts and down to her navel, where he shoved the point in slightly. Aziz pulled back to avoid it. Billie pushed the knife further, until finally she was forced to relax and came down on the point of the blade. A thin trickle of blood ran down to her panties.
He leaned forward so he could speak softly in her ear. “You happy now, bitch? With my next stroke we’ll see what you’re made of.” He stepped back and drew a line from her right hip across her left breast to the shoulder. “And you’ll get to watch. So will your boyfriend, if he gets here in time.”
With all her strength, Aziz forced herself downward and then pushed up with her legs, using the recoiling bungee to take her higher, and kicked out and struck Dance hard below the knees. It was crude but effective; he stumbled backwards as the door flew open. MacNeice stood in the doorway with his weapon levelled at the middle of Dance’s back.
“Drop the knife, Dance!” MacNeice yelled at him. Billie regained his footing but was at least two feet from striking distance. “For the last time, now—drop it.”
Billie moved swiftly towards Aziz, planting his right foot. MacNeice fired once. The round tore a hole through the backpack’s KT logo, throwing Billie forward. He was still holding the knife as he slammed face first onto the concrete floor.
MacNeice rushed to his side, took the knife from his hand and used it to slash through the bungee. As Aziz fell, he held her upright. He removed the KT label as gently as he could from her mouth. They stayed that way for a moment, her arms still over her head, till she pushed away from him with her hip and held out her hands. He slit the plastic tie. She rubbed her wrists, then leaned down to pull up her pants.
Beside MacNeice, Dance was lying in a growing pool of blood. Deep red rivulets were coursing along the stress cracks in the concrete, and he was coughing and sputtering. Bizarrely, he seemed to be talking to someone.
Aziz shrugged her shoulders several times to loosen them up. Then, pulling her torn clothes around her, she walked unsteadily towards the Glock on the table. “Turn him over, Mac. Please do it.”
MacNeice knew what was going to happen. He bolted the door, suddenly aware that the other door was locked from the inside—Dance had planned it so he’d walk directly into the action. He leaned over and turned Dance onto his back. Incredibly, in spite of the blood spilling from the gaping wound in his chest, Dance was smiling. And he was whispering something, even though he was fast running out of air.
As MacNeice stood up, Aziz approached. Seeing the rage filling her eyes, he stood between her and Dance. “Let me do it, Fiza,” he said. “I can stand the guilt.” He reached for her weapon but she shrugged him off.
Straddling the prone figure, she leaned over till she was face to face with William Dance. “You see me? You see my Muslim face? I’m still here.” His eyes were glassy but he stared up at her. “But you … you are gone, Dance, and soon, I promise you, you will be remembered only as a vile mistake, a pathetic little creature—gone.”
Dance’s eyes changed, beginning to fade as the life flowed out of them. He coughed, and a mixture of blood and spittle spilled over his cheeks. When his mouth closed, the deep red line between his lips made the smile even more obscene. He managed a slow wink. The winking eye struggled to open again, only making it halfway. Aziz pushed off the safety on her weapon and first pointed it at his head, then scanned down the centre of his body. She fired a round into his groin. His body bucked violently.
Aziz stared at his face again. She wasn’t aware of the pounding on the door. MacNeice could hear Williams screaming their names, and he reached over to retrieve her weapon. “It’s over, Fiza. He’s gone.”
“Not yet, he isn’t. Not yet. Look, the smile’s still there.” Without hesitating, Aziz fired another round, into Dance’s mouth, shattering that smile. “No more smiling, William Dance.” Then she handed her weapon to MacNeice, walked unsteadily to the opposite side of the room and leaned against the lockers.
Outside the door they heard someone shout, “Stand back!’ A moment later a battering ram blew the door open, sending the deadbolt cartwheeling to a stop at Dance’s feet. Williams rushed in with his weapon raised. Behind him it seemed as if the whole division was trying to cram through the door. “Get them out of here, Williams. Now!” MacNeice shouted.
After a quick glance at Aziz’s shredded clothing, Williams turned. “Out, out, out—it’s all over. Get out—now!” He pushed, grabbed shoulders and shoved the blue mass back through the doorway. Once he’d cleared the room he turned back and said, “I’ll cover the door. Take your time.” He stomped out and tried to slam the door, but it was hanging loose in its bent metal frame.
The voices outside were loud and agitated, but it seemed extraordinarily quiet in the room. There was only the smell of blood, spreading in a large Rorschach puddle around Dance’s body.
MacNeice tucked Aziz’s Glock into his belt, closed the harness restraining his own weapon and took off his jacket. He put it around Aziz’s shoulders and held her arms gently, then pulled her towards him in a hug. She began shuddering but said nothing.
“We can stay here for as long as you like,” MacNeice murmured, “but I’d rather get you away from this sight, this smell. We’ll wait for EMS in an interview room upstairs.”
“Montile was right,” she said quietly next to his ear, the tremors in her body subsiding.
“The groin thing?” MacNeice drew away from her and held her face in his hands.
“Yes.” She relaxed into him a little. Fearing she’d collapse, he held her up at the waist.
“Fiza, come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll take you up the back stairs. We’ll get you patched up and do our debriefing with SIU.”
“Okay.” She looked down at the corpse—the eyes, one still half-open, were splattered with blood and finally unseeing.
“Williams,” MacNeice called, “clear that corridor. Give us a path to the back stairs and a clean T-shirt from the weight room.”
“Yes, sir.” They could hear him moving people down the corridor as complaints rose above his voice. Ten seconds or so passed before they heard, “Boss, it’s all yours.”
MacNeice did up two buttons of his suit jacket to cover her chest and put his arm around her. Sidestepping the pool of blood that had finally stopped growing, they left the room.
Williams was waiting for them. “He wired the cars with transponders, boss. The Yamaha was on the other side of the building. No one noticed because he’d painted it black and silver.” Keeping his eyes carefully averted, he held out his arm. “Here’s a T-shirt, Fiz. You’re now an official member of the tug-of-war team.”
“I feel like one,” she said, and managed a smile. “Thank you, Montile. And you were right.”
“About what?”
“It was a mistake to push him. I apologize.”
“Well, as a famous comic once said, all’s well that ends swell.” He led them to the foot of the stairs.
“Who said that?” she asked.
“Me.” Williams did a slight bow. “I’ll be right up with the EMS team.”
—
MacNeice made sure Aziz was settled in the interview room before he went to make coffee. When he returned with two double espressos, she was wearing the tug-of-war T-shirt and had thrown her shredded clothing in the wastebasket.
“Sorry, Fiza, we’ll need those for evidence.”
She grimaced.
“You’re allowed not to think for a little while, but then you need to start thinking again. Fiza, you’ve got to get your head together to talk to
SIU.” He put the coffee in front of her and retrieved the clothing from the bin, laying it on a rolling table in the corner of the room. Coming back to stand beside her, he said, “Show me your stomach.”
Aziz tilted back her chair and lifted the T-shirt. The wound was an inch long and deep, but for the moment it had stopped bleeding. Her belly was pulsing rapidly, betraying her pretense of calm. The leaning back and stretching caused a fresh globule to track down the trail of dried blood to her waistband.
“It’s right on the bottom lip of your belly button. It looks like a bad razor-blade cut, which is good—it’s so fine it won’t scar.”
She let the T-shirt fall and eased her chair back onto all four legs. In the corridor they heard people approaching, and Williams appeared in the sidelight window. He opened the door a little. “EMS is here. And”—looking at MacNeice—“two suits for the incident report.” He swung the door wide for the paramedics, stepping aside as they came through.
“Put the suits in the other room. I’ll be with them shortly.” MacNeice swirled the espresso in his cup to capture the crema, then drank it down. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he said to the paramedics. “Fiza, when you go in, just tell them what happened.” He squeezed her shoulder briefly before turning to pick up the torn clothing. “When you’ve finished with your interview—which won’t be long—I’ll take you back to the hotel.”
She nodded. “Okay, boss. Thanks.”
MacNeice smiled and left the room.
Putting on her latex gloves, the solid young attendant with short-cropped blonde hair said, “Detective, would you mind just lying down on the table so we can see that wound?” Her partner, a burly man with red hair, smiling eyes and a Yosemite Sam moustache, squatted on the floor, digging into the large nylon medical bag. He was humming a tune that Aziz liked but couldn’t identify. She lay down on the cool fake wood surface and let her eyes close as the two set to work. Feeling the woman’s hand touch her skin, she opened her eyes and studied the ceiling-mounted fluorescent light, marvelling at the intricacy of the diamond-patterned plastic reflector and how it fractured and dispersed the light from the long, narrow tubes.
She heard the woman say, “Give me four swabs and four alcohol prep pads.” The red-haired man with the cartoon moustache responded, “You got it,” and returned to his humming.
She felt a sharp, hot sting and flinched. “Sorry, Detective,” the woman said. “I forgot to say this would sting a bit. It’s fairly deep.”
She felt a faint tugging as the attendant taped the wound closed, and then the cool sensation of the alcohol pads as she mopped up the dried blood. Aziz realized that she had yet to look at what he’d done to her. Even though it wouldn’t matter anymore to William Dance, she decided not to give him the satisfaction. Instead she closed her eyes again and focused on her breathing. Within seconds—they reported afterwards—she was asleep.
51.
AZIZ WAS IN the passenger seat, looking through the plastic bag of sleep goodies MacNeice had picked up for her after his interview—valerian, melatonin and two small bottles of lavender oil. “Do I do all of these?”
“Yes. Three or four each of the herbs and as much of the lavender oil as you can stand.” He was driving west along King Street towards her hotel.
“What did they ask you, Mac?” she said, closing the bag.
“I’m sure it was exactly the same interview as you had. There was a stenographer, a union rep and a member of the Police Board. They’re just doing their job.”
“Those two shots are a problem, aren’t they,” she said, looking off to the passing streetscape.
“They are. There’ll be a preliminary hearing, though, where we’ll have a chance to explain ourselves.” He made a left onto Osler Drive. “How are you feeling now?”
“Exhausted. I’d love a bath, but Doris—that was the paramedic … Doris, and her partner Dave—said not to. They taped up the cut and said I should give it at least fourty-eight hours before I get it wet.”
“Makes sense.” He pulled into the hotel parking lot and turned off the ignition. “If you’d like, I’ll stay with you till you fall asleep.”
“I’d like.”
When they got to her room, she disappeared into the bathroom to get changed and re-emerged after a long time, wrapping the white terrycloth bathrobe over her pale blue pyjamas. She sat on the small sofa. “When I was getting undressed, I realized this could be as bad for you as for me. I’m so sorry I’ve put you in this position, Mac.”
He turned on the bedside lamp and said, “Don’t be. I’m an adult. I knew what you were going to do and I let you do it.”
“You know, I actually fell asleep while they were patching my stomach.”
“Shock.”
“You think?”
“I think.”
MacNeice went to the bathroom and filled a glass with cool water. He came back and handed it to her, then opened the valerian and melatonin and gave her four of each. Following his instructions, she swallowed the valerian with a gulp of water, then put the melatonin under her tongue and let it dissolve. He walked over to close the heavy drapes, and when he turned around, her head was resting on the back of the sofa and her eyes were closed.
“Come on, I’ll tuck you in.” He took both her hands and lifted her up gently; she groaned as she straightened.
“I imagine you’re aching all over at this point.”
“I am.”
MacNeice pulled back the duvet, fluffed the pillow and took her robe as she lowered herself onto the bed. He could see how traumatized she was just from the effort it took for her to climb under the cover. Leaning over her, he smoothed the hair away from her face and kissed her forehead. He said softly, “Neither of us will ever forget what happened today, Fiza, but for me, what shines through the horror of it is your extraordinary courage.”
She managed a smile before tears filled her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. He brushed them away tenderly with the tips of his fingers and tucked her in. Draping her robe over the back of a chair, he said, “I’ll be over there on the couch. If you need anything, I’m right here.”
Her eyes were closed as she said, “Thank you, Mac … for my life.”
He turned out the light. “Go to sleep,” he whispered.
MacNeice settled down to wait until she slept, his mind replaying the scene with Dance. He knew the incident report would raise red flags and the preliminary inquiry would question whether he and Fiza were fit to serve. Once Richardson had conducted her autopsy, SIU would ask them to account for the two rounds from her weapon.
The SIU might not be swayed by Dance’s torture of her, by her being strung up like an animal, stripped and terrorized by a man intent on tearing her body apart, as he had done twice before to other women. Rather, they might take the position that Dance was provoked, cornered and slaughtered. It might be beyond the Police Board’s collective comprehension that Dance had planned what unfolded in the basement of Division—with the obvious exception of the ending. If Aziz hadn’t kicked out, if MacNeice hadn’t opened the door … along with every other citizen of Dundurn, right now the board members would be mourning the loss of an officer who had given her life to save others.
Of course, MacNeice had his own questions, lax security at the division being chief among them—the parking lot, the deadbolt on the exit door, the stairwell without a security camera, the door to the front desk and offices with only a narrow wired glass window, the basement floor that no one but the maintenance staff—and Dance—knew anything about … Why were there deadbolts on the inside of the furnace room? How, when and where had a young man been able to plant transponders on his and Williams’s cars? And how could a killer disguised as a bike courier linger in a stairwell within feet of several armed officers and not be noticed, especially when every cop in the region knew this kid’s primary skill was not being noticed?
But soon the darkness in the room and his own fatigue had their way with him. He knew he’d d
ropped off only when he heard her calling him; how much time had passed he couldn’t tell. “What is it, Fiza?”
“Nothing’s working, Mac. Not the valerian, the melatonin or the lavender oil on my temples and hands. I’m burping and I smell like a flower, but I can’t sleep.”
“Well, I do have a last-resort solution …”
“We don’t have any grappa.”
“Not grappa.”
“Narcotics?”
“No. Much more potent than sleeping pills—maybe because it takes work.”
“I’m up for it.”
“Kate’s mom gave me a book once called The Diary of a Cotswold Parson.”
“Bores you to sleep, does it?”
“Quite the contrary—it’s fascinating. But what really intrigued me were the names of people and places—names I’ve never come across before, or since.”
“How does that help you sleep?”
“I copied down the names as I read the book and memorized them. When I’m trying to sleep, I start reciting them. I’ve never made it through the whole list—maybe not even half of it—before I’m a goner. I don’t know how I ever committed them to memory in the first place.”
She sat up and turned on the bedside light. “I’ve got a pen somewhere here.”
“Not necessary.” He went over to the desk, where her laptop and portable printer sat. “I’ll enter it on your computer and print it out. It’ll take five minutes. In the meantime, count sheep.”
“Tried that.”
He turned on the computer, opened a new file and began typing: Upper Slaughter. Crickley Hill. Aston Blank. Haw Passage. Mrs. Hippisley. Frogmill. Mrs. Backhouse. Giggleswick. Cleeve Cloud. Charlton Kings. Andoversford. Cricklade. Evenlode. Apphia Witts. Wood Stanway. Miss Gist. Chipping Norton. Cubberley. Birdlip. Nether Swell. Uley Bury. Over Bridge. Sharpness Point. Minchinhampton. Mrs. Vavasour. Mundy Pole. Chipping Sodbury. Lord Ribblesdale.
The Ambitious City Page 37
