by J. M. Hewitt
Alex moves up to the front door, places himself sideways on, and with his right hand he steadies himself on the railing.
Erik realises what Alex is planning to do just as he launches himself off the railing.
“Wait!” he cries, “you can’t do–”
But he has, and Erik lets out a groan as the door gives easily under Alex’s weight. Erik hurries up to stand beside the door that now hangs on one hinge. He grabs at Alex’s arm, goes to speak, but Alex cuts him off.
“Fuck it, Erik, don’t even bother. If you’re not going to help me, call your fucking superior. While we wait for him I’ll going in to look around.”
Erik shrinks back at the fire apparent on both Alex’s face and in his tone. He remembers that fire.
When did it get extinguished in me? he wonders. Was it when I found out about Naomi’s betrayal? And he sees the look on his new friend’s face, the absolute need to find his girl, and he remembers that in himself too. He recalls the utter elation when he’d learned Naomi was alive, not dead as he had understood, it was like all his Christmas’s and birthday’s had come at once, and then, that feeling, it had been dulled, killed dead.
I can’t let this kill me, Erik thinks. I can’t let this baby stuff end me and kill my feelings and emotions dead. There has to be a way through this.
Erik takes a deep breath, closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them he knows they are blazing just like Alex’s are.
“Let’s get in there, then,” he says, roughly and shoving past Alex he marches into the doctor’s home.
They work quietly, neither of them knowing what they are looking for, but by some unspoken agreement both of them move into the doctor’s office and surgery, and between them they rifle through his diary, books and papers.
“This is strange,” says Erik, in his clipped, no-nonsense way, a mannerism he had always possessed, but knows has been missing from his speech in the last few days.
“What? What have you got?” Alex skirts around the desk to peer over his shoulder.
“Just files, patient files, but, just let me …” He flips round, sits on the chair that is meant for patients, and sorts through the papers. Separating them, he lays each file on each woman down on the floor for Alex to see.
Alex crouches down, runs his finger over the name at the top of each paper, as Erik reads them aloud.
“Gabi Rossi, Cilla Holden, Elian Gould …” At the last name Erik looks up at Alex but, the name of the woman that Alex is seeking doesn’t seem to have had an effect. Erik sniffs and looks back down at the papers. “Amber Bente, and–” He stops, straightens up in his chair.
At the sudden silence Alex peers forward, reads aloud himself, “Naomi Wilson.”
“Three of these women are dead, one was left for dead. One is … missing.”
Erik looks at Alex again, and this time he can see that he is fighting with himself at the thought of Elian dead somewhere, just like the others, as yet undiscovered. Put your detective head on, Erik silently implores Alex, like I had to do.
And it is though Alex has heard him, as he leans even closer to the papers he says, “So what do they all have in common?” He looks up at Erik, passes him three of the six files and picks up the others himself. “Because that’s our key, Erik, so let’s get reading.”
Erik shuffles through the papers, seeing that Alex has given Elian’s to him to read, and has kept Naomi’s for himself.
Clever, he thinks. Yet Alex had picked up a bundle seemingly at random and distributed them so quickly.
“You’re good,” he says, softly.
Alex nods, a restrained acknowledgement of Erik’s statement, and together, silently, they begin to read.
“Notes at the bottom, skip to them,” instructs Alex when he has finished two reports. “This doctor is fucking whacko.”
He looks over at Erik to make sure he is doing what Alex has told him, and reads from his own notes.
“Gabi Rossi, carried HPV virus and had genital warts, Cilla, now this one is interesting, ‘allowed herself to be branded with a knife to satisfy client’s demands, high risk of receiving and transmitting infection’.” Alex raises his eyebrows as he read from the doctor’s notes verbatim. “Amber was deemed ‘unclean’ and a high risk of not protecting herself with preventative methods against infection or pregnancy.”
Erik seems to be waiting, and Alex knows what for. He clears his throat. “This tells us that the–”
“You haven’t finished.” Erik cuts him off, his tone icy, his face, stony.
Alex breathes out noisily. He has to tell the man the remaining notes. After all, doesn’t Alex himself want to know what is written on Elian’s?
No, a little voice whispers in reply, but of course it doesn’t matter what is written, he already knows she is at risk, hadn’t he prompted her to get herself checked out back in London?
“Naomi Wilson, unprotected intercourse with an unknown partner, came to surgery on July 9th for tests. Results pending.”
“She came straight here before she even came home.” Erik clenches his fists, the doctor’s files that he still holds crumpling in his grip. “Why him? I mean, she could have fucking done them herself, or one of her nurse friends. Why did she come to him? Even the girls don’t fucking well like him, they’re always saying how fucking creepy he is.”
Alex gently pulls the papers from Erik’s hands. “Maybe she regretted the whole thing, maybe coming here was some sort of self-punishment.”
Erik shrugs, his mouth downturned, and Alex looks at the papers he has taken from the man. Elian’s is on the top now, and unable to help himself, Alex starts to read it.
Elian Gould – and just reading her name hurts, but Alex carries on. Came to surgery on July 6th with memory issues, requesting an MRI scan, complaining of nightmares and a desire for S.T.I tests. Patient mentioned an attack but declined to go into details, refused psychological therapy, tests performed in full batch: final result, clear on all.
Alex expels a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. Elian got the all clear!
He looks back at the papers, but that’s all there is.
Frustratingly little, but she was here. She has been here, in this very room, and less than a week ago.
Revitalised, Alex stands up and looks over at Erik. He is by the doctor’s desk now, holding more papers, more books, looking at the mountain of files, helpless. But some of those papers … Alex can see the handwriting …
He pounces on the pile, snatches it from Erik’s hands, knowing he has seen this writing before, knowing immediately which book this came from, a book that Alex never got to see, because it was always held protectively against its owner’s chest.
“This is Elian’s writing!” he says, flapping the papers in Erik’s face but pulling them away again before Erik can even focus on them. “This is from her notebook, I recognise the writing, it’s been photocopied, see here, where the ring binders are? She was scribbling in it all the time before … before she came here.” Alex spreads the copies on the desk and reads the seemingly random jottings.
“What does it say?” asks Erik, crowding in to get a look.
Alex isn’t sure, there seems to be no order to anything written. There are names, Russian Lev again, Brigitta, Alex’s own name, scribbled out, (can’t focus too much on that and what being crossed out means right now), the word ‘launderette’, Brigitta’s name, again and again. And, at the end, the words; ‘appointment, MRI, Doctor Basitaan’s office, 14th July, 9 a.m. No food or drink.’ The last words were underlined twice in heavy ballpoint pen.
“That’s today, she was here, this morning,” Alex breathes.
“Alex?”
At the sound of his name he looks up, pulled out of the past, but only for a moment, as he sees Erik holding something that sends him ricocheting back in time.
“Elian’s bag,” he says, dully, the memory of her getting mad and hitting him with the little crocheted bag in Hyde Park. “Why is her bag
here?”
But before Erik can even formulate an answer, a scream starts up, and to Alex it seems like it is coming from the very bowels of the building.
Erik draws his service revolver and heads towards the hallway, Alex hot on his heels.
By the pitch of the scream Erik fully expects to find Alex’s girl in the basement, mortally wounded, for surely nobody could make the noise and be okay, but as they descend the steps into the gloom, Erik’s gun held out in front of him, Alex breathing down his neck, he sees the source of the scream.
“Dear God,” utters Erik, and then he is pushed to one side as Alex shoves him out of the way.
There is no time for Erik to berate him, but in his mind he shouts a thousand admonishments at Alex-Goddamn-Harvey for blindly running into the room before Erik had declared it clear, so instead he jumps the remaining steps into the basement, sweeps his gun into every corner, but still keeps it in his hand as he flicks the light switch on and joins Alex.
Together they look down at the man in the chair.
All he can see is the blood, this man has been stabbed in a frenzy.
“Who is he?” Alex asks.
“His name is Roland, he was …” but he tails off. How does he even begin to describe this man who everyone in Scheveningen knows, and his torrid past, and his mistakes, and his ongoing sweet, simple nature, despite everything that has happened to him?
But no longer, Erik thinks grimly. And it is strange, but it feels like the end of an era.
And then, just as he thinks he is looking at Roland’s dead, slashed body, a wheeze erupts from the man and Erik sees the red spittle flying towards his face.
“Dear God,” he cries again. “He’s alive!”
But what can he do?
Stem the bleeding, Naomi’s calm but firm voice comes into his head and Erik blinks in surprise that he should hear her, now, after everything.
And he would, he has had first aid training, of course he has, but where would he begin? Because as he casts his eyes over him it is clear that Roland has been stabbed repeatedly, all over his body.
“He’s bleeding out,” Alex mutters. “We can’t do anything.”
“Roland,” Erik begins as he gets a hanky out of his pocket and dabs fruitlessly at the poor man’s face, “Roland, who did this to you?”
Roland is still breathing, and crying, and it’s an awful sight to see. It’s worse than the girl’s bodies he has seen recently because they were dead, and this man will soon be dead, but right now, right here, he’s just … dying.
“C-c-c-colonel,” stutters Roland, and Erik tries to ignore the blood that pours out of the man’s mouth as he speaks.
“Colonel?” Alex says into Erik’s ear. “You told me about him, you said he was a legend, that he disappeared.”
Erik didn’t care for Alex’s accusing tone and impatiently he elbows him out of the way. “He’s hallucinating, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” he says, and in spite of the blood that still leaks out of Roland’s mouth, he leans closer. “We are in the doctor’s house, did he do this to you? Or did someone hurt the doctor too?”
Roland, the light already fading away, fixed his eyes on Erik. “The doctor is …” he tailed off, seemed to lose consciousness for a moment and then snapped his eyes open again. “He looked after me, the last time. But he’s …” Roland sniffed as his voice wavered. “He doesn’t like me anymore, he doesn’t like anyone anymore, he hurt me, he tied all of us up down here.”
Erik plants one hand on the floor as Alex comes back, shoving his way in. “You said all of you, who else was down here? Roland? Roland? Where did they go, who else was here with you?”
Roland turned his dull eyes to Alex.
“Lev, my friend Lev, and Ellie.” At the sound of her name Alex feels the blood freezing in his veins, before it heats up and his heart beats in double time.
“Where are they now?” Alex asks, and his hand is clutching Roland’s, and he doesn’t care that the man’s hand is covered in blood, because this man has seen Elian, and he needs him to stay alive long enough to tell them where she is now.
Roland’s head jerks his head to the left. “Into the tunnels, she went first, she was going to get help, then Lev escaped too.” The tears finally spill over, saltwater mingling in with snot and blood. “He followed them,” he finishes.
And he was finished. The blood stopped leaking, the chest stopped mid-rise, and the final exhale never came.
As one, Erik and Alex stand up, and together, with a mutual, unspoken agreement, they make their way to the little trap door in the wall.
63
ROLAND
3rd May 2000
The colonel gave us his instructions on how we were to blow the apartment up. Normally, I would ask about the wisdom of doing this, because I wouldn’t usually want anyone to be hurt in the neighbouring homes, and an explosion could hurt them, or cause a fire that would spread through the walls. But I didn’t ask, because I didn’t care. As soon as it was done and finished I could go home to my mother and forget everything that had happened.
I didn’t care about anything anymore. My friends were dead, all three of them, even Miles. The doctor had checked on him when I told him I was alive, but when he came back out of the bathroom he told me, with sad and regretful doctor eyes, that Miles had passed away.
I knew the Colonel would have tried to help Miles, because he wasn’t just the Colonel, he was also a doctor, you see. And I knew that doctor’s had to help people even if they didn’t like them very much, because they had sworn to help people even if they don’t want to. It was called something like the hypocritical oath. I knew this because I knew more than people thought I did, because when you are lonely like I was before the Irish brothers and Mark became my friends, you read a lot. And sometimes the words don’t make sense, but I learn them all the same, and I find there is always someone kind who will take the time to explain the words I don’t understand.
But then I stopped reading because I found my friends.
I guess I’ll take up reading again now, since they are all gone and it will just be mother and me again.
“So are you clear, Roland, on your role?”
“Yes, doctor, I mean, Colonel,” stuttered over my reply.
The Colonel frowned, leaned in close to me. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I have to turn the gas taps on, all of them. I’m to leave it for ten minutes then light the fuse on the wire.” A fear physically shook my body, turning my stomach to water. “Are you sure we will have enough time to get out?”
The Colonel nodded in a kindly, old-man way. “Yes, because I told you, it takes at least half an hour for the gas to reach the fuse.” He stopped, frowned again. “Do you remember how I told you it works?”
I did. The gas would escape from the tap underneath the sink in the kitchen area, the ones that I was to turn on in the parking garages downstairs would help the process along. The Colonel had told me the pipe in the garage lead straight to this apartment as a kind of reserve gas tap, in case the one in the kitchen ever stopped working. I hadn’t known that, and I thought it was very wise of the building’s landlord to do that, so nobody would ever be left without heating should something happen to the apartment’s own gas supply. From then, it would take at least thirty minutes for the gas to reach the lit fuse on the end of the wire that was set up and trigger the explosives. I’d asked the Colonel what the blocks of clay was for, but he said it wasn’t clay, it was dynamite. I knew what that was, I’d watched Roadrunner, that wily coyote used it all the time, but it didn’t look like the stuff the Colonel had got.
“And Mark, you are clear on the procedure?”
Mark barely shrugged from where he sat in Vinnie’s old chair in the lounge. Mark was what my mother would call a ‘liability’. I had been doing all the work here, well, me and the Colonel. Mark had just had his face on the glass coffee table, sniffing all the white powder up his nose and putting the brown liquid into
syringes in his arms. I had been surprised that the Colonel had allowed such behaviour from Mark, and even more surprised when I had seen the Colonel tie the belt around Mark’s arm and actually inject the heroin himself! The Colonel had seen my questioning look, and he had taken me into the bedroom for a ‘man-to-man’ chat, as he called it.
And I admit, I had felt very grown up when the Colonel confided in me that Mark wasn’t handling this as well as me, and he had to keep him sedated for his own good.
Mark wasn’t as strong as me, the Colonel said, and I had puffed up with pride.
That had been two days ago, and Mark still wasn’t managing to cope. So the doctor had kept injecting him, and Mark was all calm and relaxed now.
In fact, he reminded me a lot of Smith, in poor old Smith’s final days.
“So, it is all in your hands,” said the Colonel now as he passed me a lighter.
I looked down at it, realised it had belonged to Miles. I clasped it tight in my grip. Once I had lit the fuse, I would take the lighter and treasure it forever. It would be a reminder of the wonderful friends I had once had.
There was one thing troubling me, that the boys would die all squashed up in that bathtub. I knew we couldn’t give them a proper funeral, but to me, them being in the bath just didn’t feel right. It felt … disrespectful.
“Can we bring the brothers out here?” I asked, tentatively.
The Colonel looked at me, and I rushed on. “It just doesn’t seem right, I-I really want to move them out here, in their chairs, where they always used to sit.”
And to my surprise, he agreed.
Together – for Mark was no help – we carried the bodies of Miles, Vinnie and David and sat them in a row on the sofa. I tried not to look at my friends and when it came to carrying Vinnie I moved quickly down to the feet, so I wouldn’t have to be near his shoulder stumps.
