Doors Without Numbers

by C. D. Neill

  It was only after Jenny and Paul had left that he wondered why Jenny had looked so relieved by his decision. Was she lonely at the house with only Paul for company? It didn’t seem plausible yet he hadn’t imagined the look that had flashed across her face when he had told her of his decision. Thinking back, he realised that she didn’t look as carefree as she usually did, she had looked tense and the way she scoffed the chocolates had suggested more nervous energy than hunger. He hoped she wasn’t still suffering from the breakup with her girlfriend. It would probably do her as much good as it will do me to be at home he thought and managed a smile imagining the chaos that was to come.

  Two days later Wallace Hammond was relishing the thought of going home, he had signed the discharge form with ill disguised glee despite the evident disapproval from the consultant. He didn’t even complain when he discovered that his front door was partially blocked by the treadmill he had ordered and subsequently had forgotten to cancel. The enormous parcel had been pushed into the hallway during a joint effort by Paul and Jenny whom had both decided early on that it was too heavy for them to move anywhere else. So Hammond had returned home with a grin and a sideways hop through the front door. He took a long look at the home he had missed. Trails of tinsel hang down from the stair banisters. A small Christmas tree, bedecked with garish baubles and blinking fairy lights had been wedged between the arm chair and the sofa bed in the living room. Hammond thought his house had never looked worse but he thanked his son and Jenny with heartfelt appreciation for his welcome home.

  It quickly became evident that all was not well within the house. Jenny was behaving particularly oddly. She was constantly fussing over him, offering him blankets or attempting to move furniture to ease his access. He was managing well on crutches in spite of the discomfort to his sore ribs, but despite appreciating her efforts, her bustling only achieved in making him short tempered and irritable. For the fourth time since he had entered the house, Hammond found Jenny looking out of the window in a furtive manner. During his absence she had started to bite her nails. Hammond had become familiar with her daily routine of sitting on the steps outside the front door to smoke a cigarette but he now noticed she went to the back garden. Paul was also behaving differently; Hammond saw the way his son had snapped at any question directed his way, as if he were in defence mode.

  Finally, when he caught Paul and Jenny mouthing silently to each other over the dining table, he had enough and demanded an explanation.

  Paul did his best to reassure his father that everything was normal, but he failed to convince his Father whose temper threatened to escalate. It was Jenny who eventually relented by explaining that the house had been broken into during Hammond’s absence.

  “Did you report it?”

  Paul spoke up; he was obviously prepared for an argument.

  “No, Dad. Nothing was taken, I expect we disturbed them.”

  “You were in the house?” Hammond was aware his voice was getting louder; he was beginning to fear the worst.

  “No, we were at the hospital, visiting you. We came home and found the house disturbed.”

  Hammond questioned them why they had not reported the break in. Nothing had been taken, there was no evidence of having had an intruder break into the house other than a broken lock on the back door and a house left in greater disarray than it usually was.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “The drawers were pulled out and emptied but that was all. We checked everything and were sure that nothing was taken.”

  Hammond pushed Jenny’s offering of fish fingers and peas away from him, he was uneasy. It would have been common sense to have called the Police, they could have checked for fingerprints.

  “The thing is Dad. Jenny is a bit paranoid. She thinks it has something to do with you, that someone was looking for you or something.”

  Hammond looked sharply at Jenny who flushed. “That’s absurd. Why would anyone want to find me? They are not going to find me in a drawer!”

  Jenny threw her fork down onto the table with such force, it surprised Hammond into muteness.

  “I am not being paranoid Paul! Why ransack the house without taking anything of value? Of course they were looking for something in particular! And I know I was followed that day, I know it!”

  Hammond felt stress form a hard ball in the pit of his stomach. He repeated his request to be told everything, warning them not to try and keep anything back. Eventually Jenny sat down and leaned her arms on the table as she looked at him.

  “Ok. Two days before the break in, Paul was at the hospital with Lyn, I went to get some supplies from the corner shop. As I left the house, a silver car pulled up beside me really slowly and then drove up the road. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but on the way back, my bag split and I was bending down picking everything up when I saw the car again pointing back the way it had come. I noticed that the driver was watching me through his side mirror.”

  “That’s nothing Jenny! He probably fancied you or something!”

  Jenny’s reply to Paul was spoken equally vehemently.” No! I saw the same car the next day outside the house and then again when we were on the way to the hospital.”

  Hammond was watching Jenny closely. He questioned whether it could simply be a neighbour’s car. Could she identify what car it was? Jenny answered with certainty; a silver 2005 reg Citröen Picasso. The driver had been of large build. Mary had been sure that the car was not owned or used by the neighbours. Hammond believed that Jenny was genuinely concerned but it was possible that the break in had nothing to do with the silver car that Jenny described.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I told Sergeant Dunn the day she came, she told me not to concern you and that she will look into it.”

  “So, that’s why she wanted to see me?”

  “No, not entirely anyway. I think it had something to do with a case you had worked on together.”

  Hammond shook his head. It didn’t make sense. The only case he had worked on with Dunn recently was the Robert’s case which had been taken over and consequently sealed by DCI Morris. If it was necessary, Dunn had plenty of opportunity to visit him at the hospital, yet as far as he knew she had made no effort to see him during the last fortnight. If she had known he was still at the hospital, why did she come to the house? It was peculiar and he was too impatient to wait for her to contact him. He pulled himself out of the chair, grimacing as his tender rib protested at the exertion. Impatiently he left a message, telling Dunn he was now at home and that she must call him as soon as possible. Hammond replaced the telephone receiver back onto the wall mount but remained leaning against the kitchen counter. Behind him he could hear Paul and Jenny clearing away the dishes and he shouted at them to stop. He wanted to be left alone. He needed to be quiet and still, his head was consumed with tangled thoughts. He had thought that coming home would help him to think but instead he found it suffocating.

  Ten minutes after the front door slammed behind Jenny and Paul, Hammond allowed himself to breathe slowly. He knew he was being irrational but his distemper had got the better of him. He was angry with himself for being weak. He was angry with his failed memory for not allowing him to understand why he was carrying a sense of urgency for reasons he still couldn’t identify. He was angry at Paul for not telling him Lyn had a new boyfriend and he was angry at Lyn for not loving him. Lastly, he reasoned, he had a right to be angry at Dunn for not answering her phone.

  Hammond ignored the dirty dishes on the table and shuffled his way towards the living room with the almost-empty bottle of Brandy. He couldn’t be bothered to find a glass and swigged the liquid enjoying the sensation of warmth creeping down inside his body. It took him several attempts to make himself comfortable on the sofa bed but eventually discovered that if he piled the pillows underneath his right knee, the pain in his ankle eased enough to allow him to relax. He laid back as much as he was able without disturbing the bandages wra
pped around his chest and closed his eyes. For the first time in over a month he found peace.

  When he awoke, it was dark outside. He had no idea what the time was. He pulled himself into an upright position and listened to the sounds in the house. It was silent apart from the ticking of the grand-daughter clock in the hallway and the letterbox flapping gently from the draught that came in around the front door. He heard no sound to indicate that Paul or Jenny had returned home. He laid back again and tried to go back to sleep but his mind was too alert so he opened his eyes and allowed them to become accustomed to the shapes of furniture in the darkened room.

  He thought about Lloyd Harris and wondered if he was going through a worse torment than what Hammond felt, his memories were teetering at the tip of his brain; within reach yet irretrievable. He tried to focus on each thought, one at a time, but found that one thought quickly became overlapped by another more consuming until he was barraged with thought after thought that had no ending. Eventually he sat up and fumbled his way to where the light switch was by the living room door, cursing every obstacle that caused him to lean too heavily on his damaged ankle. He blinked quickly forcing his eyes to adjust to the brightness in the room and made his way towards the sideboard beneath the CD Player. It took him several minutes to find what he was looking for; a box of twelve shot glasses given to him one Christmas by a friend of his mothers. He took each glass out of the box and laid them upside down, then he positioned them at different corners of the table. One glass represented Lloyd, another Kathleen, he placed both glasses beside each other and then identified other glasses with each thought. One glass represented Thomas that was placed beside the glass representing Graham Roberts. Beside them, he placed another glass, the one without any name. This glass represented the unknown person who had collected the post from Robert’s home. On the far side of the table he placed five glasses, Mark Callum, Theresa Davenport, Claire Bennet, Fiona Nwasu and Lucas Dean. Near to them he used a glass to represent Salima Abitboul and another underneath. He did this without knowing who this last glass represented but he knew he had forgotten someone. One by one Hammond positioned each glass in a separate area on the table until he was able to consider each topic of thought individually. The box file had been wedged underneath the Christmas tree, he hadn’t known where else to place it but now he pulled it out and returned to the chair where he opened the box and reviewed its contents for what felt like the hundredth time. He looked again at the photographs of the children seated on the steps looking towards the shadow of the unknown photographer. He studied the girl with the plaits again and thought how beautiful she was. Her eyes were dark and arresting, her skin dusky, her limbs long and lean. She didn’t look European or Asian. Could she be Moroccan? Could she be Salima? When Hammond had met Harris at the Golf Club, Harris had said that Salima had come to England to be a model. Later Harris confessed to having suspected Salima had worked for Pattie as an escort. He looked again at the date of the back of the picture. 1987. Salima, (if that is who the girl in the picture was) looked no older than fourteen. Salima had been nineteen at the time of her disappearance in 1991. It made sense, it was plausible. Hammond reconsidered Harris’ information that girls had been brought over to London from Africa and Europe for prostitution. Could Salima have experienced the same or was she approached after her modelling contract had expired? The late 1980’s had brought changes to the Migration Laws. Hammond’s parents were the few who had agreed with Margaret Thatcher’s claim that British people feared being ‘swamped’ by immigrants. It would have been difficult for a young Moroccan to have been granted entry to the UK as anything other than a tourist but not impossible, particularly if she had relatives resident in the UK. If Salima had wanted to remain in England after her visa had expired, it would have been difficult to have had a new work permit granted so marrying a British citizen may have been an attempt to settle in Britain. Hammond read through the notes again. He still couldn’t understand the relevance of the Offstead report or the notes about Rachel Turner, the social worker.

  Hammond sat still and breathed slowly, trying to ignore the wave of frustration that threatened to overwhelm him. He was bored with this case, all the possibilities could easily amount to absolutely nothing at all, yet he couldn’t rid himself of the sense of duty he owed to Harris. There was still a nagging feeling in him that Harris could be right. There was something odd, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. He tried to remember the first time he had the uneasy feeling. It had been when he had been looking at the photographs of Lucas Dean’s apartment. Perhaps it would be worth looking at them again, but to see what? He had looked at the police investigation pictures carefully, if there had been anything unusual he would have seen it, even if he didn’t the investigating officers at the scene would have. So why this burning feeling that he was missing something? The clock ticked monotonously in the hall, the minutes slid past and the stress gradually left him. He thought about Paul and wondered where he was, whether he was angry. The Christmas tree stood like an unwelcome guest in the corner of the room and he realised he hadn’t even bought any gifts for anyone. He had been so preoccupied with his own mess that he hadn’t even considered how his son was feeling. He had left his studies to be near me and in return I am behaving as if he isn’t here. Hammond looked around the room, noting the decorations and the tracks in the carpet left by the vacuum cleaner. He swallowed with guilt. I am a rotten father he thought. I should appreciate my family instead of shouting at them. Then it dawned on him what he had failed to notice before. Mark Callum had no family. Fiona Nwasu and Claire Bennet had no family. Lucas Dean had been in foster care throughout his childhood. Theresa Davenport was described as a loner, with no known family, but she was an exception. Someone had cared enough about her to have written about her on a forum for bereaved family and friends of people who had committed suicide. And then Hammond remembered. He allowed himself a gleeful chuckle before clutching his ribs to stop them hurting. He remembered Cherry13, and he knew their identity. He had found the connection between the five decedents and Salima Abitboul. They had known each other during their younger years, had possibly lived together or had been fostered by an unknown carer. This explained why Mark Callum had kept Salima’s hairbrush. It had been a memento, something to remember her by; an item no-one would notice missing.

  Hammond was relieved to have found a lead but at the same time, was infuriated by the slow progress. There were still unanswered questions. What was their connection to Pattie? Salima had possibly been employed by her, but what relevance was Pattie to the others? Were they working for her also? If so, in what way? Nausea welled up in his throat with the thought that the children had been used as prostitutes. It wouldn’t be the first time that lone children had slipped through the welfare system. What Hammond didn’t know was whether Rachel Turner had been their social worker at the time, if so, she would have known each person individually and would possibly be able to shed light on the five people. Harris had been correct in his assumption that the deaths had been linked, but this wasn’t enough to warrant any more attention on the deaths themselves if all people had died by their own hand. The only conclusion that Hammond could make, at this point, was that there was a possibility that the five people had all agreed to end their lives or perhaps more rationally, they were affected by the death of their friends and had decided to follow by example. There wasn’t enough to suggest anything suspicious although Hammond was aware that he was beginning to feel increasingly concerned about Harris’ involvement. Obviously there was more to his story than he had admitted, no doubt involving the woman Harris had referred to as Pattie. However, it didn’t explain why Harris had initiated the investigation. His research had been thorough, the amount of notes he had written confirmed this, but what wasn’t apparent was why Harris had felt the need to delve deeper for more information. The only rational thought was that Harris had been unaware of what had been going on at the time of his involvement. Perhaps he had been used
somehow. Following Harris’ confession during their last meeting, it would be easy to assume that Harris wanted to free himself of guilt before it was too late, but even as he thought it, Hammond knew such a theory didn’t make sense, because Harris had only suggested being guilty of taking bribes and coercing confessions. There would be a time when Harris wouldn’t remember his own involvement so surely it didn’t matter? Unless, Harris was guilty of a lot more but was too ashamed to say. But why willingly expose himself when it otherwise would not be discovered? Hammond studied the photograph of his former colleague, he searched the eyes in a foolish attempt to understand the man behind the image. Suddenly he realised why his friend had asked for his help. He had already known there were more to the deaths than simply suicidal people ending their misery, Harris wanted the truth of their deaths investigated by someone he trusted because in some way he felt responsible.

  “No reasonable moral being may draw breath in the world without an open-eyed freedom of choice.”

  Henry Havelock Ellis. The Dance of Life. 1923

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The call from Dunn came just before seven in the morning. Hammond was wide awake having spent several hours reviewing Harris’ notes.

  “I couldn’t get back to you any earlier, we had multiple stabbings outside a nightclub.”

  “‘Tis the season for it.”

  “Too many drunk people getting out of control isn’t exactly my idea of Christmas celebrations. Anyway, your message sounded urgent.”

  “You have a lot to tell me, and I want to hear it. Sooner rather than later.”

  He could hear her hesitation at the other end of the line, and it annoyed him. It was obvious she wanted to tell him something but was holding back. Hammond didn’t want to play games. He prodded her for information. There was a pause and then a sigh as Dunn decided to be co-operative.