The Glass Wall

by Clare Curzon

  Quietly he went back to Emily’s bedroom and leaned over, feeling for the warmth of her hands and was reassured. Her pulse appeared as feeble and as scatty as ever, reminding him of a small beetle teetering over rough pebbles.

  He felt unexpected relief that his first guess had been wrong. Not the old lady. She was safe here in bed. Everything could continue as it was, as it should be. Only her covers were disordered, one pillow fallen to the floor. He lifted it back and untangled the duvet from between her bony legs.

  Emily alone here. Beyond her the penthouse had been deserted when he arrived: the carer not at her post to let him in, and the door unlocked. So she it was he’d seen fall from the window. The woman Sheena. He felt no regret. She meant nothing to him.

  He had many times seen violent death; compelled to watch, or participate in action that led to atrocities. Most inevitable at the time, almost necessary, leaving him numbed. Only that first time had it had that devastating power, sapping his mind to leave him unable to erase its nightmare repetition.

  For the moment those childhood images no longer crowded his brain. It was out in the street that the horror had seemed to be repeating itself. But he clung to the basic truth: that this was a different death. This time for someone never a part of his life. It hardly mattered whether she’d forced that end or been an unsuspecting victim. Nor would he reach for any reason behind it. Inexplicable things happened which were no concern of his.

  Yet there was certainly danger, because, in this country killing must be accounted for. It wasn’t always so for him. He had killed because he was under orders, killed in cold blood, unquestioning, and because you killed them or they killed you. No doubt then who the enemy was. Muslims or pirates or Catholics, they were as savage as each other, raiding, raping and laying waste the smaller islands. Only survival mattered.

  Lately he’d begun to see it as a kind of madness; still sometimes in his sleep was back there doing it again. There were moments when he had to hold on to himself and fight down the demons, because memories crowded his head overfull and he knew what he had done, again heard the screams, saw the blood, the decapitations, the dead children left lying in the sun to rot.

  He looked around now, reassured by the quiet apartment with its pale, rich carpets and the strange paintings on its walls. This was his present reality. Could he believe he’d madly imagined the other, the falling body, because once before when it happened he’d watched petrified, tight-bound and unable to move. He’d heard her high, attenuated scream as she was thrust out into space and fell, turning over and over until the sickening crunch of her bones on the rocks below. His mother, following her two youngest babies deemed useless; unlike himself who was nine years old and could be taken away as loot.

  Sickened, he went through to the bathroom off the nurse’s bedroom, and plunged his head under a shock of cold water. He buried his face in the soft folds of a towel. He shouldn’t be here now; having no key, was not supposed to arrive until Sheena buzzed him in downstairs. Instead, alerted by what he’d seen from the street, he’d shouldered his way past a woman coming in, then found the apartment door unlocked.

  And then, checking the front rooms, he’d missed whoever slipped out. Concerned with the open glass panel, he wouldn’t have heard a lift going down. The one he’d used was still there at this level. He couldn’t remember if the other had been there when he’d rushed past.

  Get out, he’d told himself. Creep downstairs, all the way on foot; wait outside in the rain. Turn up at the right time, having collected the clean stuff from the launderette. Find no one to let him in, and finally go away. Leave Nurse Orme to puzzle over why Sheena wasn’t here …

  Or stay on. Let it seem everything was all right: that he’d come at the time arranged; that Sheena had let him in and gone on her way. He could simply get on with caring for Emily.

  Going straight from the riverbank to the address she’d looked up in the local directory, DS Rosemary Zyzcynski found Allbright at home, relaxed, wearing sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. He’d answered the door himself and she caught no sound of anyone else in the house.

  He was a physical type part of her remembered from childhood. Recalled and loathed: the square body with arms and legs awkwardly attached at the four corners; slightly hump-backed; no neck and the heavy, cubical head hung forward like a bullock’s stolidly enduring driven rain.

  His impact on her was so strong that momentarily she was at a loss. Then training kicked in, even while she wondered that he could affect her. She identified herself and reminded him of the lost debit card.

  ‘Yeah,’ Allbright agreed, ‘but I thought that was all settled. They said some kid picked it up and blew fifty off it.’

  ‘And just happened on the right four-figure PIN number to feed into the machine?’ Isn’t that unlikely, Mr Allbright?’

  His eyes flickered, a lightning reaction out of keeping with the lumbering body. He gave a lopsided grin. ‘Blame my leaky memory. Can’t hold numbers, so I jot everything down. Must have pulled out the note I’d made, along with the card.’

  She let enough silence build to let her doubt get to him. Behind the heavy face she could sense his resentment, but his features gave nothing away.

  ‘Right,’ she said calmly. ‘Well, now that you have it back perhaps you’ll be more careful in future. Keep the number and the card in separate places, as they advise.’ She sounded total Plod. Let him accept her as a dumb female doing follow-up for a male colleague. She hoped she hadn’t alerted him to being a suspect. It wasn’t a formal questioning anyway or she’d have taken a second officer along.

  ‘Maybe it’s safer to cancel the card and apply for a new one,’ he said, trying her out.

  There would be no point: Micky Kane was dead, so couldn’t misuse it again. Not that she’d any intention of telling him this latest development. Let him pick it up from local gossip or the next issue of the Sentinel. Even if Micky had lived, the remembered PIN number was useless without the card.

  She left it at that, but the suspicion remained with her either that Allbright had given Micky the money for his fix, or – surely more risky – he had told him the number and sent him with the card to get the cash.

  ‘You thought you might have dropped it at the railway station.’

  ‘Really can’t be sure now. Could have been a number of places.’

  So he was recanting on that. Did he realize the station suggested his connection with the dead boy? She would need to be careful here, remain impersonal, because instinctive dislike was making her keen to lump some kind of blame on him.

  ‘A pity you can’t remember specifically.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. All sorted. I’ll be fifty quid the wiser in future.’ He gave a rueful grin. If he’d hoped it would disarm her, he failed.

  The suspicion strengthened in her that the fifty pounds had been to pay Micky off, and the man himself had trusted him with the card to draw the cash at the bank’s wall-safe. But why should Allbright take such a risk? – unless he had some hold over the boy, so that Micky wouldn’t have dared do more than instructed? He’d have had some good reason for returning to the man. Probably would have done so, if he hadn’t been picked up unconscious from the overdose.

  And didn’t that mean that, as soon as he could get free of hospital, this is where he would have headed? If they applied for a search warrant would they find evidence of his presence in the man’s house?

  Maybe she was racing ahead of the facts. There wasn’t enough against him to take such measures. Only her gut feeling, and that was too personal.

  ‘Well, thank you for your cooperation, Mr Allbright,’ she told him, making it sound final, but being far from satisfied. She nodded and turned back into the wind, conscious of him standing there staring after her until she got into her car.

  It would be interesting to see whose face came up on the security film used through the cash-point peephole. Tomorrow, for starters, she would need to visit the man’s bank and run
it through. Also she’d make sure uniforms asked around for witnesses of any meeting between the two. Someone must have noticed Micky about the streets in the past few days, a boy of school age during term time. She would need permission from Upstairs for a sanitized post-mortem photograph to accompany an appeal in the local press.

  With a murder case pending, there would be a wide area to investigate. It was essential to know how long the boy from Wimbledon had been in this locality, and what brought him here; whether he already had some connection with the town or simply been dropped off by some driver giving him a chance lift. Perhaps his parents’ visit would clarify that, but they wouldn’t be in a state for in-depth questioning straight off.

  So, suppose her suspicions were right and Micky had been sent by Allbright to pick up the cash, what kind of association with the man did that imply? Not a charitable one, for sure. What services would Allbright have been paying a thirteen-year-old boy for?

  Sadly, Zyczynski thought, Prof Littlejohn’s post mortem examination might supply that answer. And where did the smack overdose come into the calculation? They must question whether Allbright was a dealer or supplier. Locally there was an established underground trade in drugs. A night worker at a warehouse where heavy goods vans called regularly over the hours of darkness – the man was certainly worth looking into.

  It wasn’t until that evening, as she watched an American thriller on TV involving a car chase round hairpin mountain bends that she suddenly knew why Allbright had seemed familiar and so odious.

  He was the same physical type as the constable who’d shattered her life at the age of ten. He’d accompanied a woman officer to break the news of her parents killed in Italy by speeding teenagers in a stolen sports car. He’d been the one loudly announcing it to her aunt as she watched from between the railings of the stairs.

  It was from that heart-chilling moment, when his face and body became indelibly printed on her mind, that nothing had ever been as sane and secure again. From that day, slowly she had grown to learn the uncertain boundary between adult authority and adult evil, until, years later, she’d dared face out the abusive uncle who’d offered the false security of his home.

  In its way that encounter had been the setting-out point for where she was now, upholding the law, doing what she could to fight back at what was rotten. Allbright’s likeness to the constable had shaken out the memory, but she had to make sure her present judgment wasn’t affected by it. His physical appearance didn’t make a villain of the man, any more than the crudeness of that constable had meant he’d intended inflicting pain.

  Preparing for an early start on Monday, she was oppressed by a sense of guilt. She’d picked up Micky’s case almost by accident, the only police involvement at that point; possibly the one who might have prevented what followed. If only she’d probed into his background when she’d seen him in ITU, reasoned a little further.

  Preparing her report on her laptop PC, she stared at what she’d typed on to the screen. If only so many things – if she’d better used the time before he escaped from the hospital; if she’d been quicker making the connection with Allbright; if she’d talked direct with the boy’s parents instead of leaving it to an intermediary in the Met. All of that, then she might have, should have, prevented it. His death, his innocent death.

  At the same time wasn’t that morbidly subjective? She tried to see what could be offered in her defence. He was a drug user, therefore to some extent self-destructive. A rebellious runaway schoolboy from what, so far, appeared a respectable, middle-class home.

  It was recall of the white, dead face that condemned her. Micky hadn’t deserved to end as he did, and from the first she’d recognized him as vulnerable. She’d felt shame, staring down at the sodden flesh already puffed from immersion, that she had forgotten the little brown mole at the corner of his mouth. If she’d had to describe him it would have escaped her. But she recognized it again in death, an inch to the right of the sharply sculpted gutter with its childlike up-tilt above cupid’s-bow lips.

  Within hours she would have to face his parents in their grief, and she hated what she must tell them.

  Someone should pay for this. Herself, yes, but she hadn’t been the one who’d made the decision and acted on it, taking the young life as if it had no worth. If that was Allbright – and she was more than half convinced that he was at least involved – then he should be pursued until he had nowhere to run, and prosecuted as heartlessly as he’d used the boy. Even then she’d not have atoned for it herself.

  Towards the end of her shift Alyson Orme caught herself clock-watching. She’d been uncomfortably conscious of Bernice’s raised eyebrows as she folded the blue silk dress into her locker together with the evening shoes. ‘A night out with the girls,’ she’d lied.

  ‘Good for you. It’s more than time you broke out. All work and no play makes Jacqueline a right old fart.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll take that to heart!’

  And when it came to a little short of 8 p.m. Bernice nodded to her to get going. She changed quickly then rang through to the penthouse. Ramón was already there and answered calmly. Emily was fine, he assured her. She seemed to have enjoyed the pureed rice and apple for her supper.

  There was sleet on the wind as Alyson ran out huddled in her overcoat, and she felt the shock of puddled mush strike through the toes of her kitten-heeled shoes. But a flash of headlights showed Keith already waiting. He drove across the car park and flung the passenger door wide. The car was warm inside. The scent of his sharp aftershave blended with the pine air-freshener that dangled over the windscreen making her think of retsina and tossed Greek salad.

  ‘I can’t quite believe this,’ he said, smiling into her eyes as she got in.

  ‘Nor can I actually.’ Then she laughed, leaned over and pinched his arm hard through the cloth of his jacket. ‘But feel that! It’s real.’

  Immediately her earlier nervousness was gone. She had feared they would have nothing to say, both tongue-tied by the enormity of what they were doing, both so over-inhibited by a long-established sense of duty. But it was going to be all right. They should feel no disloyalty to anyone from an evening spent in each other’s company. Good friends; simply that. Nothing must be allowed to spoil these special hours together.

  Superintendent Yeadings confirmed that DI Salmon would be running the general enquiry into Micky Kane’s death. Even before it was officially declared as unlawful killing he was making arrangements for setting up an Incident Room.

  The facts they had so far were few enough. That morning, fifteen minutes before the police had been alerted, a pair of scullers from the college had seen the body lying face down under a few inches of water at the river’s edge, as they went down to drop their shell in. The leather coat had weighed Micky down as the bulky trousers became snagged on a submerged tree root. The brutally crushed back of his head had floated, just visible beneath the surface like some grotesque Halloween mask.

  A dog being walked on the towpath was attracted by the scullers’ sudden interest, barked and threatened to plunge in after the body. Its woman owner recoiled, retching and, when her shuddering had steadied, rang the police on her mobile phone. All three witnesses had been driven to the nick to give an account of what they’d seen. Not a lot to work on, but it was a start.

  Prof Littlejohn had already agreed a time for the post mortem. In the meantime they had Z’s information on the boy to interpolate.

  At a few minutes before midnight Alyson had been decanted from Keith’s car at her door. He came round to steady her stepping down, clutching her coat about her with both hands. They had already thanked each other and there was nothing left to say. Just a quick pressure on her upper arms and then he watched her key in the number to gain entry to the building. She looked back before disappearing behind the smoked glass of the double doors. He put the car in gear to draw away.

  He looked at his wristwatch. She was on time to relieve Ramón as arranged.

>   In the apartment all was still. Ramón stood up and padded out from the kitchen as he heard her come in, dropping her keys on the hall table by the ebony carving of the Three Monkeys.

  He gave a slight bow, his flat face impassive as ever. ‘All is well here,’ he told her in a way that sounded old-fashioned.

  ‘Of course it is.’ She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘That’s neither less nor more than I’d expected. Thank you so much for stepping in like that at such short notice.’

  ‘It happened that I was free. Perhaps I can be of use again.’

  Alyson doubted there would be a need. Certainly no repetition of tonight, since Audrey Stanford would be going home in two days. But Ramón deserved encouraging. Now that she’d broken out once, perhaps she’d really organize a night on the town for the girls. Some of the nurses she saw in the canteen were worth knowing better. It wasn’t good that they should see her as aloof.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she told him. ‘Well, goodnight.’

  She saw him out, then went, still in her overcoat, to look in on Emily who was sleeping with a little smile on her face. Alyson bent to kiss her forehead. ‘Goodnight, Great-aunt. Sweet dreams.’

  She didn’t feel ready for bed herself, still too wound up by the excitement of the evening. Instead she poured herself fruit juice and went to drink it in the dark by the glass wall. Below, the town’s guardian orange lights burned on. The occasional home-going car swept round the main island and disappeared between shadowed buildings.

  Everything was normal, secure in a very wonderful world.

  Chapter Fourteen