Reckoning Point

by J. M. Hewitt

  Elian looks at the card and then back up to meet the girl’s eyes. “Thank you …”

  “Brigitta,” she says and reaching out a hand she squeezes Elian’s arm. “My name’s Brigitta, and I’m right next door, if you ever need … anything.”

  After Brigitta has gone Elian closes the door and leans against it. Is it obvious from just looking at her that she is in desperate need of medical help?

  “The night time screaming probably gives it away a little,” she mutters to herself.

  She throws the card down on a side table and goes back to the bedroom, picking up the abandoned blanket on the way. Climbing back in bed she wraps the blanket around her and stares out of the window.

  She can see her reflection in the glass and she averts her gaze, not wanting to look at the mess she has become. She wonders about seeing a doctor, knows that she was supposed to, Alex kept reminding her that she must make an appointment at the clinic, should get tested and checked over.

  But she never made the appointment. For if she has got something, a disease that the madman passed along to her, what point is there to knowing? Sometimes it’s better to stay in the dark on certain matters.

  But her memory, the weird blank spots in her brain; that might be something that needs to be checked out. She has a funny feeling that today is not the first time Brigitta has told Elian her name. And she doesn’t think it’s the first time Brigitta has knocked on Elian’s door to wake her from a screaming fit either.

  With a sigh Elian turns from the window and shuffles into the kitchen area. She flicks the kettle on and while she is waiting for it to boil she opens a drawer and removes a brown notebook. She flicks through the pages that are filled with her neat handwriting until she finds a blank page then she writes down the name ‘Brigitta’, and underlines it three times. As an afterthought she adds the word ‘neighbour’ beside it. She is about to put the notebook back where she keeps it when she opens it up again, finds what she has just written and then flicks back a few pages. There is a page with a date on it, 28th June, and on the page is written ‘Brigitta’. Elian frowns, flips back further to a page on which is written the date of 25th June. Again, underneath the date, Brigitta’s name is written in Elian’s writing.

  She slams the book closed and shoves it in the drawer. A cold film of sweat creeps across her face and as she plucks a mug from the cupboard she sees her hand is shaking.

  It can’t be ignored; her brain is in worse condition than she originally thought.

  With a hot, strong, sweet tea cradled in her hands she goes back to the bed, puts the mug on the windowsill and looks out at the early morning bustle in the streets below.

  It’s a good view from here; in the near distance she can see the pier and the beach and looking the other way provides views of green parks and tram lines. If this were a holiday destination it would prove to be very calming. But Elian is not here for a break, she’s got unfinished business, like her frequent nightmares keep reminding her.

  Although she knows that they’re not really nightmares.

  They are memories.

  4

  LEV

  DEN HAAG and later, SCHEVENINGEN

  3.7.15 Mid-morning

  Lev Aliyev pauses in front of the Hotel Des Indes and takes a moment to study the yellow fronted facade. He can barely believe this is his home for the time being. It’s so opulent and rich; it’s everything that Lev is not but everything that he wants to be.

  He feels pumped just being here. Finally, after decades spent in the wasteland that was Chernobyl, he is free. And there are people here, locals and tourists, young and old and in between. Naturally gregarious, Lev knows that Holland will suit him just fine.

  But he can’t stay here at the Hotel Des Indes forever. Although he has money, at €250 per night this hotel is most certainly a stop gap.

  In the three weeks that Lev has been here he has travelled the number one tram between The Hague and Scheveningen Strand countless times. He likes the look of both ends; although the green wooded areas in the middle are a bit too close to what he has recently fled from, so he knows he can disregard that part. His only decision is to choose between the bustling, lively city centre and the seaside resort with all its traditional features. And today he has an appointment with a realtor at noon to view an apartment in what is reputed to be a nice complex on Gevers Deynootweg. In fact, he thinks, glancing at his watch, it’s getting on to mid-morning. He may as well make his way to the apartment now, at least then he can check out the immediate area before the agent arrives.

  Buoyed by the chance of a new, permanent home, Lev makes his way through the winding streets that are always lined by a canal to the main train station and climbs on the next tram to Scheveningen.

  After alighting from the tram he takes a shortcut over the reedy green area that separates the beach from the street and begins walking along the promenade. It is busy, tourists and residents, street sellers and ice-cream vans line the promenade. He pauses at many of the restaurants, making a mental note of the ones he would like to try. He suppresses his excitement at having so much choice available after his many years of slim pickings. He remembers the evening before, still sharp in his mind of his first masochistic experience here in Holland. The vast variety of food isn’t the only new option he has. He pauses, his thoughts overwhelming him as the memory rushes at him and making his way unsteadily over to the promenade wall he sits down for a moment.

  He has wanted to do what he done last night for so long, ever since he witnessed Niko back home partaking in similar activities. And Lev wasn’t disappointed; the rush of the blood and that alien feeling as he watched her, it was something that he will cherish. But he wants it again and now he checks his watch, it was less than twelve hours ago but already he wants to do it again. He wonders if this is how the drug addicts feel when their high begins to wear off. And maybe he will do it again, but not here, no shitting on his own doorstep, that’s one of the rules he has already made. And although whoever he does it with will be willing, it’s not something that he wants to announce.

  Clambering to his feet, he resumes walking and it doesn’t take him long to locate Gevers Deynootweg and he climbs up the external stairway, finding that apartment 1058 is on the fifth floor, offering him views of the promenade and the pier that stretches out over the North Sea.

  “Goededag!” The greeting comes from a woman who has walked up the stairs behind him and now she makes her way along the corridor of the fifth floor.

  “Hello,” Lev replies in careful English.

  The woman is middle-aged, plump and dark-haired and she moves slowly towards him, scrutinising him as she walks. “Are you moving in?”

  Lev looks towards the pier again, weighing up his answer. “I’m not sure yet,” he says, glancing at her. “Maybe.”

  “In this apartment?” Her tone is disbelieving. “You don’t know what went on in there?”

  Lev looks at the door to number 1058, narrowing his eyes as though the action will fill him in on whatever it is that he doesn’t know. The woman waits, eyes wide in expectation and Lev gathers that the little bit of information that she is going to impart has made her day.

  “The Monaghan murders! They were tortured, gunned down in there and cut up!” She tuts, eyes gleaming and crosses her arms over her ample bosom.

  Lev does not answer and her disappointment is palpable. He turns away, looking out to sea to hide his excitement. Suddenly he cannot wait to get inside number 1058.

  In his mind he envisages the interior, the walls pock-marked with a long ago papered over history of bullets and the lingering fragrance of charred flesh. He smiles to himself, almost serenely, and even though he has yet to see inside, he is certain that apartment 1058 is where he is supposed to live.

  5

  ROLAND

  January 5th 2000

  The party wasn’t planned. They never were.

  It was about lunchtime on a Wednesday. The mood had dipped s
ince the Christmas and New Year celebrations had all finished and as I sat with the three brothers in their apartment, it was Vinnie who had the idea.

  “Fuck this shit,” he said. “Let’s throw a party.”

  I sat up, excited. Because I’d been to their parties before and there really was nothing like them. Before the three brothers came here, the only parties I went to were at the Civic Community Centre with my mother and the closest thing to high blood pressure there was when someone upped the stakes in a game of klaverjassen.

  Mother wasn’t too keen on me spending time with Vinnie, Miles and David Monaghan, she had never been keen on me spending time with anyone except her. I know why, since that time at school when I’d sold a lot of my possessions in exchange for the promise of friendship. She said it wasn’t the way it worked, I told her that unless I done it that way, nobody wanted to be my friend.

  She’d cried then, and at her tears I had relented and stopped trying to buy friendship. She kept a close eye on me after that, it was only her and me; I had no father and no siblings, so throughout my childhood and my teenage years it was just the two of us. Then the Monaghan’s came to town, and I came to life.

  I was eighteen but I know I appeared younger. Not just in looks, but my behaviour was off too. I wasn’t as clever as some people my age, I was slower to catch on and I hadn’t experienced life the way most youths had. I’d never had a girlfriend and the only alcohol I’d ever had was a jenever at Christmas with Mother. But the Monaghan brothers didn’t seem to care. They didn’t laugh at me, or slap me around like the older boys used to do at school. They were friendly. They were my friends.

  And I’d been hanging around with them since just before Christmas. It wasn’t just the four of us, because wherever the Monaghan brothers went, many people followed. They were like the pipers of Hamelin, and all of the rats and mice of Scheveningen came out and surrounded them.

  This party was like all of the others. Ice cold beer and whiskey chasers were on tap and drugs were passed around freely, as long as you could pay for them. And in apartment 1058, money wasn’t necessarily the preferred method of payment. Vinnie especially preferred to sell his drugs in exchange for sex and this suited most of his customers just fine. I would watch in awe as my hero led a gorgeous girl into his room. Sometimes he didn’t even take her into his room, occasionally they would just do it right there in the kitchen area or the lounge. One time, I arrived at a party late and he was going at it on the balcony, in full view of all the neighbours and pedestrians passing by below.

  Some of the neighbours complained time and time again to the landlord. Others who lived in the apartment block joined in. The landlord lived away and couldn’t keep a close eye on things, so he let it slide. This suited us just fine.

  All in all the parties were the best fun I’d ever had and they would have continued like that for the rest of our lives, had it not been for Mark Braith.

  No, when he joined the party as a stranger, he wormed his way in. He appeared charming and I could see the three brothers looked at him the way I looked at them.

  And for the first time in my life, I could see something that they couldn’t.

  For the first time in my life, I was the smart one.

  Mark Braith was a frightening man.

  Mark Braith would be the end of us all.

  There was only one person in Scheveningen who would turn out to be mightier than Mark Braith, and that was the Colonel. We all knew of him, but none of us actually knew him. He was way out of our league, the stuff that legends and folklore are made of.

  Eventually I would count this great man as a friend, a father figure, but not yet, not in the year 2000. It would take a lot of months and a lot of trouble before I got to meet him.

  6

  ALEX

  SOHO to FITZROVIA, LONDON

  3.7.15 Early afternoon

  Alex sways as he walks out on to Old Compton Street and realises he is not as sober as he had hoped. He squints at his watch, shoves his hands in his pocket without registering the time and decides to walk over to her flat.

  He walks through Soho at a swift pace, reaching Great Titchfield Street in ten minutes. He stands across the road from her building, looking up at her window. She’s not there; in his whiskey-fuelled mind he’s sure that if she were in there, his very bones would feel it. Some part of him – the old part – scoffs at this train of thought. Alex doesn’t think in terms of love or endearment. He has always been a man of science, of proof and evidence.

  But even though she’s not in there he doesn’t leave. This is as good a place as any to be right now. All her things are in there, she left so quickly he’s sure she wouldn’t have had time to pack it all up. Idly he wonders, if she is not coming back, will she send someone to get everything from inside? If he waits here long enough, will a removal van turn up? Or does she not care about possessions and material things left behind? Knowing her a little, Alex thinks the latter is the most likely.

  The thought of that, of losing her forever, brings a sharp pain to his chest and he leans against the pillar of the Kings Canary, staring upwards at her window.

  As he looks at the building the door creaks open and seeing his chance to get inside he runs across the road. “Hold the door!” he calls.

  The woman exiting the communal door checks Alex out and with one glance seems to decide that he doesn’t live there and has no business asking her to hold the door. She lets it go, throws what seems to be a triumphant look at him and jogs off the down the road without a backward glance.

  Alex darts up the stairs, catching his foot in the process on the concrete step. He lurches forward, landing hard on the porch. He hears feet slapping the pavement fading into the distance and rolling over he manages to stick his foot in the heavy blue door, swearing out loud as it traps his ankle. Alex struggles to sit up, glances around to ensure nobody has witnessed his humiliation and sees the woman turning into Foley Street at a jog.

  Using the door to lever himself up, still in a half crouch, Alex slips inside the lobby of Elian’s building.

  It takes all of his remaining strength to walk up the three flights of stairs and that already old joke they shared about his physical fitness threatens to bring tears to his eyes. To dispel the emotion Alex concentrates on the tiled stairs, the date engraved on every single one from the 18th century, the manufacturer name and the borough of London. At Elian’s door he places a hand palm down on it, runs his finger over the many locks. With growing desperation he squats down and lifts up the doormat. No key. Taking out his iPhone – new, because the original one was destroyed in Chernobyl – he takes numerous photos of each of the five locks from every angle. Finally, he knocks on the door, not expecting, and not getting a response.

  He thinks of the times he has been here before. The first time, a few months before, when Elian was only there to be used by him to get what he wanted, in that case it was information that would lead him to those he was being hired to investigate in Chernobyl. Then, another time, only weeks ago, when he had followed her here after the horrifying ordeal she had faced after he had made her assist him in the Chernobyl case. He has no good memories of this building in Fitrovia, in fact each time he had been here had just driven home to him what sort of person he was. Or had been, he liked to think. Because he was trying to do the right thing, trying to help her, falling in love with her, letting her escape …

  He waits a while longer until the corridor becomes dim as the day draws to a close, and with a heavy heart he steps away from Elian’s door, walks slowly down the three flights of stairs and begins to make his way back across London, to his own home.

  It’s a typically grey day in London. Though it is still summer, the clouds are low and heavy and it strikes Alex that all of May and June they were in the midst of a heat wave but since she has left, the sun has remained hidden.

  Selina is there when he comes in and he feels a stab of regret at seeing his aunt’s face lined with worry. She had
grown fond of Elian, and her sudden disappearance is a concern to her too. Selina’s mask of sympathy slips as she no doubt smells the alcohol and takes in her nephew’s dishevelled state.

  “You know that you won’t find any answers in the bottom of a bottle, Alex,” she says mildly as she flicks the kettle on.

  He doesn’t answer, but instead scrolls through the photos he took on his phone of Elian’s door and slowly, the solution starts to come to him.

  He is a private investigator, no matter how much security has been in place, no doors have defeated him before. He has people on his books for jobs like this, so why is he sitting here half cut and almost crying? With renewed vigour he accepts the black coffee that Selina passes over to him and stands up.

  “You’re right, aunty,” he says and raises his mug to her in a toast. “I’ve done too much of nothing on this, but I’m all over it now.”

  And gathering up his phone and his laptop, he balances his mug and marches determinedly to his own rooms upstairs. In his own space he switches on his laptop and waits for it to boot up. As he waits he sips at the coffee and thinks back a few months before Ellie got under his skin and into his heart. He was a very different man then, he cared about few people; just his aunt, and himself and on a lower scale his friendships. Though most of his mates were people he used for his detective work, acquaintances rather than pals. He had always been out for number one, he took care of his own business and lived exactly how he pleased.

  Although, there was a man who had changed him once before, one of the first cases Alex had ever taken on, a case so personal and tragic that it had pinpricked even Alex’s cold heart and pierced the metaphorical metal of his armour. So why had he slipped back into his old hard and unfeeling ways, staying that way for years until she came along? And what will happen if he doesn’t find her? Will he revert, the way he did once time moved along, the same way it had all those years ago on his first case? And how has this even happened, how has his whole demeanour been changed by a girl so many years younger than him, one who is practically a stranger, one with whom he has nothing in common with? It is beyond him.