by Stav Sherez
Geneva shook her head. ‘Phone’s going straight to voicemail. Let’s hope she’s sleeping it off upstairs.’ She updated him on what she’d learned from Lando. Carrigan told her what the bartender had witnessed.
‘An argument? It doesn’t feel like this is something done on the spur of the moment. There’s too much planning involved.’
Carrigan nodded. It would have to be checked out but he agreed with Geneva.
They reached the reception desk, the counter adorned with glossy tourist brochures, offers for massage treatments and vouchers for all-you-can-eat curry houses. Postcards from around the world – Sydney, Ulan Bator, Bishkek and Brasilia – hung above the counter. A blue door led to a back office. Faint strains of at least four different types of music collided and meshed in the hallway, the raw detonation of bass trembling the floor at regular intervals.
Carrigan pressed the small greasy buzzer and scanned the ceiling.
Geneva followed his gaze. ‘No cameras on the outside, either. I checked.’
‘And no security.’ He pointed back towards the front door. ‘Anyone can just walk in.’ He pressed the buzzer again and turned to face Geneva. They were standing only inches apart. ‘Thank you.’ Carrigan’s voice was coated in a slight bleed of reverb as it bounced across the cavernous ceiling.
‘For what?’ Geneva relaxed her grip on the stress ball and placed it back in her pocket.
‘For not mentioning during the briefing that I’d dissuaded you from following up Madison’s story.’
‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate.’
‘But you’re still pissed off at me?’
Geneva shrugged. ‘I am but I’ll get over it.’
‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I should have let you follow your instincts. My head was on other things.’
‘You did seem unusually distracted.’
‘And there I was thinking I’d managed to hide it.’
‘From the others, maybe.’ Geneva tilted her head, her mouth slightly open. ‘You know, perhaps you should consider finding a job where you don’t have to hide so much of yourself away?’ She saw the change in his expression. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘It just so happens I might not have a say in the matter.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Branch wanted to see me. DPS are looking into the convent investigation.’
‘The nuns?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s me Quinn’s interested in. This is just a minor technicality. It’s all the rest of it.’ He saw a scatter of freckles above her left cheekbone he’d not noticed before. ‘You ever feel like you’ve fucked up your entire life?’
‘All the time.’
Carrigan laughed. ‘I’m glad it’s not just me then.’ He pressed the buzzer again. ‘I’ve been going over something Branch said. How it’s difficult enough living with your own troubles let alone someone else’s and I don’t know why I’d never thought of it like that before.’
Geneva placed her hand on the back of his elbow. ‘For once, maybe Branch has a point. Maybe we’re all better off living alone.’
‘You too?’
She pursed her lips. ‘New boyfriend’s starting to be unreliable, Mum’s giving me grief, I’m broke, and the divorce hearing is up next week. That’s how fun my life is at the moment. My lawyer keeps telling me I should give up, that I’ve got no chance in court – but, if I don’t fight, my mum’s going to lose her flat. I can’t back down now.’
Carrigan was about to reply when the door to the back office swung open and a man stepped out. He wore a cracked leather jacket over a bare chest and the vestigial mullet of ageing rockers. His fingers were encircled by a collection of chunky silver rings adorned with skulls and tiny silver motorcycles. He reached the desk, used one arm to balance himself, and collapsed into a severe coughing fit. He tried to apologise between coughs but that just made it worse.
‘I’m sorry but we only rent to young people.’ He coughed again and some of last night’s food broke away from his stubble as his eyes tracked Geneva in waves of linger and drift. ‘And I’m afraid we don’t rent by the hour.’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of ten minutes.’ Carrigan slapped his warrant card down on the counter.
‘I don’t care if you’re a policeman, we don’t cater to that sort of thing,’ the manager said as he turned away.
‘We’re not looking for a room,’ Carrigan replied. ‘One of your residents was murdered last night.’
The manager turned back as the meaning of the words washed over him, his face transforming in swift stagger-frames. ‘Jesus.’ He exhaled the word – one long sigh – and used his hands to rub his face awake. ‘Who?’
‘Anna Becker.’ Geneva took out the photo and placed it flat on the counter. ‘We need access to her room,’ she said, but the manager could have been in another dimension, staring transfixed at the photo, his head rocking slightly from side to side.
‘Fuck. We should have listened to her.’
‘Listened to whom?’
‘Madison,’ the manager replied, introducing himself as Max as he unhooked the partition and joined them in the hall. ‘Friday night, Madison was running around shouting that Anna had been kidnapped but everyone ignored her. She was off her head, not making any sense, totally in la-la land.’
‘What about you? Did you ignore her?’ Carrigan asked.
‘I told her to go to the police,’ he replied, still shaking his head as if he hadn’t fully extricated himself from the steely grip of a nightmare. ‘I can take you to her dorm.’
‘That’s okay,’ Carrigan said. ‘We can find it ourselves.’
The manager smiled and pointed to a stack of hostel maps that could have been designed by Escher. ‘Everyone gets lost in here. You’d better follow me.’
He led them past the main hall and into a narrow L-shaped corridor punctuated with heavy wooden doors, a Victorian sternness and rigidity in each joist and dowel. Everything was obscured by dust and in dire need of redecoration. Reminders of the building’s past greeted them at every turn – lists of rugby players and star athletes, the embossed names now as brittle as their bones. Paintings fogged with gunk and grime spanned the walls like black windows.
As they ascended, it got darker and colder, entire corridors stretching out into tunnelled blackness. They followed him through a maze of dusty hallways, past mezzanines and split-level walkways. They heard music, laughter, arguments, sex. They saw people shuffling out of rooms and creeping down hallways. Teenagers hugging and screeching on landings. The carpet clung and stuck to the bottom of their shoes, the light fittings high and distant and never quite bright enough.
‘How many on your staff?’ Geneva asked.
‘Me and a night man. We have cleaners come in once a week but they change all the time.’
They continued past shadowy hallways and interminable corridors. They passed the lift several times but Max said it was acting funny and more likely than not would drop you off at the wrong floor. They climbed a last flight of stairs, heading for the residential dorms.
Halfway up, Carrigan stopped. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes. His chest felt tight and prickly. He hadn’t expected there to be so many stairs and it made him acutely aware how out of shape he was. When had he started letting himself go? He grabbed the banister and tried to get his breath back.
‘You okay?’ Geneva called from above.
Carrigan nodded. He hadn’t eaten for hours, the pills he’d taken churning and growling in his stomach, his legs trembling like rubber bands.
‘Place can do that to you.’ Max stood beside a painting of a ruined castle, a golden-haired princess tumbling down to the black rocks below. ‘Angles are all off by a couple of degrees – takes some getting used to. Proportions are all wrong too, nothing’s quite level or straight, does your head in.’
‘Have you seen Madison today?’ Geneva asked as Carrigan finally caught up.
‘You didn’t know?�
�
‘Know what?’
‘She checked out last night.’
‘Last night? When?’
‘About nine.’
‘And you didn’t try to stop her?’
Max held up his hands. ‘I can’t force people to stay.’
‘Shit.’ Geneva looked up. Faint convolutions of dust swirled in the upper reaches of the ceiling. ‘Madison say where she was going?’
‘The fuck away from here is what she said. She didn’t really give me a chance to talk. She said she was following your instructions – that you’d told her to check out.’
13
The dorm was not at all what Carrigan had expected. He’d thought it would be crammed with beds, people living in each other’s faces, stink and laundry and pressed bodies, but instead it was large and airy with high windows looking out onto a garden. A bunch of daffodils had wilted in their vase and gave off a cloying sour smell. There were three beds, one against each wall of the room. Beside each bed was a small table and next to it a chair, a group of lockers and a chest of drawers. A huge wardrobe stood by the window. A small sofa faced a flatscreen TV and DVD player. Posters of film stars and furry animals covered the walls and celebrity magazines carpeted the floor.
Max pointed to the bed in the far right corner. ‘That’s Madison’s, the one next to it’s Anna’s.’ He looked for a long moment at the wall then gripped the wooden slat of the bed frame and squeezed it.
‘What about the third bed?’ Geneva gestured to the other side of the room.
‘Been empty last few weeks.’ Max was holding onto the frame as if it were the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground, a light sheen of sweat prickling his forehead.
‘But anyone can get in?’
‘There’s a lock on the door and only the girls and management have the key, but . . .’ Max sighed, ‘. . . you know what kids’re like. Locking a door’s just too much hassle and they trust others to behave like they would so, no, it’s not always locked.’
‘Who was the last person in here?’ Carrigan asked.
‘Me,’ Max said. ‘Last night. After Madison checked out.’
Carrigan walked over towards a small standing lamp. The light was off. He snuck his hand in under the shade and touched the bulb. It was still warm. ‘You sure you were the last one in here?’
‘As far as I know, yes.’
Geneva glanced at Carrigan but couldn’t read his expression. She took out her phone and texted Madison, asking her to get in touch as soon as she got the message, then took off her jacket and slung it across the back of a chair. She snapped on her gloves and got on her knees and looked underneath the bed but all she found were tumbleweeds of dust, lost pens, empty drink cartons and stray cigarettes.
Next to her bed, Anna had constructed a makeshift bookshelf by draping a scarlet blanket over a cardboard box. Geneva scanned through the books. Books on acting and actors, drama theory and practice, self-help manuals and several audio CDs on improving your English pronunciation in a week. The CD cases were worn and cracked and it was obvious seven days hadn’t been enough. Parallel to the bed, along the thin strip of wall Anna faced every night, were black-and-white photos stuck up with sticky tape. Geneva recognised Joan Fontaine from Rebecca, Liz Taylor before the plastic surgery and disastrous marriages, Gloria Grahame, Ida Lupino and Carole Lombard. The photos had a dull lustre as if they’d been stared at so hard it had faded their natural gloss. Below the photos, also taped to the wall, was a square of white paper. In a child’s slanted and unruly handwriting, the words: One Day It Will Happen To Me.
Geneva tried to imagine living adrift from family and friends, stuffed into a small room in a strange city. How hard it would be. The constant learning curve of each day. The tug of home. But Anna had been determined. She hadn’t backed down or crumpled. Madison had said that Anna came to London to study at RADA. She hadn’t got in but she hadn’t gone back home either.
Geneva checked the wardrobe next. The left side was empty. Madison had taken her clothes with her and that made Geneva feel a little better. She left the bed for forensics and headed for the lockers.
‘Do you have a master for these?’ Geneva pointed to two identical padlocks affixed to each locker.
Max shook his head but Carrigan had already pulled out his key-ring. He stood beside Anna’s locker and selected a small flat Swiss Army knife. Using his fingernail, he teased out a slim silver toothpick. He snapped on his gloves. Anna’s locker took him two minutes to open. He had Madison’s open in half that time.
‘What?’ he said when he saw Geneva’s expression.
‘You sure know how to impress a girl,’ she replied in her best gangster moll voice.
Anna’s locker held scattered cosmetics, tubes and clasps and powders, a file containing personal documents, a camera and, on a high shelf, a smartphone lying on top of three laptops. Geneva picked up the phone. The screen was spiderwebbed with a fine filigree of cracks. She knew she couldn’t turn it on. Computer forensics would be furious if she inadvertently managed to wipe the hard drive. She put the phone to one side and pulled out the laptops. They were of different makes but seemed brand new. Carrigan stopped what he was doing to watch. Max leaned in. Geneva flipped open first one lid then the next, a sharp intake of breath puncturing the silence.
All three laptops had been utterly destroyed. It looked as if they’d been attacked with a hammer. Most of the keys were missing, the screens were lined with cracks and fractals, the plastic casings splintered and shattered.
A gust of wind rattled the windows, causing the door to rebound against its frame with a long hollow thud. They all jumped, exchanging nervous smiles. A commotion of tearing and growling made them snap their heads up and crowd the window, their bodies pressed tight against the glass. They could hear them clearly now, a cacophonous fury of yelps, snarls and barks – one of the many dog packs prowling the city. Too expensive to feed in this current climate, these pets had been dumped and left to fend for themselves and now roamed freely across the capital.
‘Fucking dogs,’ Max said. ‘Couple of residents got attacked last month. I called up the council but haven’t heard zilch.’
Geneva watched the pack prowling the alley. They were a motley assortment of retrievers, terriers and beagles but there was a sharpness to them she’d never seen before, a ferocity in the tautness of their hunger and frantic beating of their hearts. Below her was a small courtyard, veiled in shade by the north wing of the building. Max explained it had been damaged in the great storm of ’87 and the owners had bricked it off instead of fixing the damage. There were several long sash windows studding the second and third floors but no light escaped. Geneva looked closely and saw that the windows were boarded up from inside, reflecting black.
She turned back to the locker and took out the solitary file folder. Inside, Anna had kept all her important documents. She flicked through them until she found Anna’s passport. They would need it for next of kin details. The passport was warped by heat and well thumbed. Geneva saw stamps for Greece, Peru and Papua New Guinea. The alphabets were curly and mysterious. Tiny multi-coloured worlds within worlds, Anna’s handwriting so small and neat it made her chest hurt. Geneva continued flicking, tracing Anna’s journey across the remote parts of the globe that previous summer – Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia – and then she reached the last page.
‘We need to stop,’ Geneva said.
She handed Carrigan the passport. She watched him flick to the last page, his eyes turning narrow as he got to the photo – except there was no photo. Someone had carefully snipped it out leaving only a neat rectangular gap.
14
‘We need to seal this room.’
Max started to complain but Carrigan ushered him towards the door. They walked back down the stairs and across the landing.
‘What about your partner? What’s she doing up there?’
‘She’s not my partner and I wouldn’t worry about her,’ Carrigan
replied, recalling how Max’s eyes had strayed and fixed on Geneva as they stood by the reception desk. ‘It’s not my concern and it’s not yours either.’
Max was about to say something then caught the look on Carrigan’s face. He sighed as he unlatched the divider. Carrigan stopped the partition before it clicked shut.
‘In there.’ Carrigan pointed to the back door.
He followed Max into a self-contained office that held a desk, a row of filing cabinets, a computer and very little else. Halfway across, a curtain divided the office from Max’s personal space. Max was taking a seat behind the desk but Carrigan carried on, parting the curtain and stepping into the living room.
‘Hey!’ Max’s protests were immediately drowned out by a blast of bone-shaking rockabilly. He reached for a remote control and turned off the music. ‘Sorry about that. Got it rigged to start when I walk through the door. Fuckin’ hate being greeted by silence.’
The room was large and filled with books and records and magazines. Framed album sleeves dotted the wall between posters of Miles Davis, Metallica and The Cramps. Photos depicting a younger Max, fronting a three-piece band, were prominently on display. A set of decks and a stack of records lay in one corner. A Fender was propped up against the bed, two of the strings missing. The room smelled sweet and tangy. Max reached for a packet of Rothmans and lit one, his hands shaking slightly as he put flame to cigarette.
‘Who owns this building?’
Max shrugged as smoke curled out of his nostrils. ‘No idea. Always some corporation, guy in a suit comes and sees me, but as long as they pay my wages I don’t care. Far as I’m concerned, the less they interfere the better.’
Carrigan sat down on an armchair with the consistency of a bean bag. ‘We’re going to need to access your CCTV.’
‘There isn’t any.’ The cigarette disappeared behind Max’s fingers as he blew smoke in Carrigan’s direction. ‘Not good for business. Kids don’t want to know they’re being watched all the time – it’s why they left home in the first place.’
