Girl Seven (21 page)

‘Have you seen
Rosemary’s Baby
?’ I blurted out.

He turned his head. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s like when she goes to the doctor and says, “There are plots against people, aren’t there?” But no one believes her even though it’s so obvious, and it’s just because she’s a woman, really. So if a guy came to you and said that this had happened, would you be more likely to believe him?’

He frowned a little.

The guy who made models out of decapitated animals and dolls was starting to think I was sounding crazy.

I trailed off and waved a hand. ‘Never mind.’

Bemused, he carried on searching for whatever it was he was searching for, muttering to himself, barely audible to me.

‘We were on a team-building exercise a few years ago that I was invited to because... I don’t know, I hate the things, but I get on with the people there and they wanted me to come,’ he said. ‘His wife was very sick. She’d been sick for a while, I think. Still is, maybe. This is the man you’re talking about?’

The photo that he held out contained a group of men all dressed in camouflage gear, holding paintball guns, striking different macho poses. To the right, smiling next to a non-smiling and squinting Darsi Howiantz, was DCI Kenneth Gordon. Only he had hair then. A comb-over.

A violent urge to throw up punched against my gut from the inside and I had to avert my eyes.

‘Fuck, um... Fuck, sorry. Yes. Yeah, that’s him. Sorry, I’m not sure what I wanted you to do or even if there was anything you could do.’

‘Have you considered getting the police to question the boy in the juvenile detention centre?’ he asked, sitting back down.

‘Well, yes, but he won’t talk. Obviously. Someone’s going to see him tomorrow but I don’t see how that’s going to change anything. I think he’s been promised money or something and it’s probably a lot.’

There was a silence.

Watched by the eyes of the figurines, I sighed, realizing that, even with a name, DCI Kenneth Gordon was so far away, so unconnected, so well protected, that ascertaining his guilt, let alone exacting any sort of revenge, seemed about as likely as bringing my parents or sister back from the ether into which they had disappeared.

My sister would be almost eight now. She’d have grown into her own distinct personality. Already, at such a young age, she’d been talkative.
Bolshy
, someone had said.

It wasn’t something I often thought about.

‘I believe you,’ Darsi said. ‘I don’t think you’re lying. I think you need to be 100 per cent sure of your theory before you take it anywhere else though.’

For the first time since Mark had begun pursuing this job for me, I encountered the thought: What if it wasn’t him?

It had to be, now. It had been him for so long in my mind that now it simply had to be.

‘I think I might need a drink,’ Darsi said, glancing in the direction of what I guessed was his kitchen.

‘I’m not sure I should have come, sorry.’

‘No, I understand why you did. And I really don’t think you’re lying, or delusional. And I’m sorry about your family.’

I wondered if he was thinking about sex or what we were doing the last time I was here, but when I met his eyes I saw that he wasn’t. He was genuinely sympathetic. I also trusted that he wasn’t going to go and tell anyone or have anyone sent after me. But...

What if it wasn’t him?

‘Is there anything you can do?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said in an apologetic tone. ‘Not within the confines of the law and... my job. You can’t just go investigating a senior colleague.’

‘No, I get it.’ I nodded. ‘Sorry for... um, crashing your Sunday.’

I stood up.

So did he.

He took me by the arm and gave me a hug. It took me by surprise. For his skinny frame he had a powerful grasp.

‘If you want to come and talk more about it, that’s fine,’ he said.

He knew I wouldn’t.

My face was buried in his chest. ‘OK.’

I knew I wouldn’t.

I left thinking, What if it wasn’t him?

What if it wasn’t him?

Everything was bathed in a low green light, in the dream.

I always knew when I was in dreams. As a child I’d even been able to wake myself up from them at will. I used to shut my eyes tight, hiding from the monster searching for me in a deserted supermarket, convince myself I was going to open them to see my darkened room, and more often than not I did.

I never forgot them either. Years later I could recall specific dreams.

Lucid dreaming, they called it.

In the dream, I was following her through the corridors of a house, but the house went on for ever. On each door was a house number: 128, 129, 130, 131, 132...

Up stairs, red hair, up more stairs, looking back at me, footsteps coming up behind me—

I started running, after her, away from them.

The men with the
blades like this.

Up and up, no more doors.

They were going to kill me because I should be dead.

Green light.

A door that I turned into, rattling the handle, but when it flew open there was a five-year-old girl with half a head sitting on the lap of a man with a comb-over, blood running from the open brain on to a hand rubbing a thigh and rubbing a thigh—

I’m here to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right with you?

There were pieces of glass under my feet. Pieces of glass embedded in the child’s hands.

I wanted to reach out and push the pieces of her head back together, wipe off all the blood and take her with me. I wanted to go back and hear what she had had to say that day when I’d walked out.

Kiki, look!

But I ran, again, and the footsteps getting closer, two pairs of them.

‘Go
away
!’ I screamed back down the stairs, stumbling, thinking that I was going to die the same way as them, the way I’d been supposed to die...

Another door. Locked.

19.

The girl running ahead of me wasn’t Seiko, I realized.

Red hair, into a room—

It was Caroline.

Room 25. Inside, breathing hard, shaking, locking the door because there was a key and the footsteps disappeared. I waited, sure that they were going to try and hack their way through, but there was only silence.

Don’t die.

I
wasn’t dying now. Not today.

I turned and she was in my room. Except it wasn’t my room; it was my old room, in my parents’ house. There was an old pile of art books in the corner. I don’t know why I noticed because she was standing in the middle of the room.

Caroline.

This is what made him love.

Green light.

There was a Klimt poster on the wall. I used to Blu-Tack the base down and hide a small bag of weed behind it when I was in England. In Japan I didn’t need it.

She was standing in the middle of the room, watching me with those blue eyes, lascivious in their intelligence. Breathing through her slightly parted lips, she smiled a little. She walked towards me before I walked towards her, back and back against the door, where she took my wrists and held them above my head and kissed me and a surge of energy rose in my chest.

I wrenched my hands out of her grip and pushed her back and back on to the bed, running my fingers through her red hair, her body lithe and hard under mine. In the green light she looked like a nymph painted by Waterhouse, pale and firm and heaving with desire.

‘Ohhhh...’

In the dream, I knew what her voice sounded like. Like a sigh.

In the dream, I tore the pencil skirt off that body,
my
body, pressed my lips against her skin, until she rose up on her knees and put her hand between my legs and
fuck
, I was so wet, and she slid her fingers inside me and there was this weird buzzing sound as she was looking down at me, this weird buzzing sound and this was only a dream...

I knew this was only in the dream.

I closed my eyes on her parted lips and red metallic hair falling across her face and her fingers rubbing against my cunt and opened them and Mark’s flat was buzzing.

My head was clouded with dreamscape and I got up, half walking and half staggering into the living room to answer the intercom.

‘He... ahem – hello?’

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

It was Alexei’s voice, low and urgent.

They must have followed me here from Noel’s.

I let them in, because there was no point in trying to keep them out.

Muttering, ‘Fuck sake...’ I walked back through to the bedroom to pull on a T-shirt and skirt, trying to think myself out of still being so visibly flustered and aroused. I straightened the crumpled duvet and took a quick look at myself in the mirror before they knocked at the door.

As I opened it they both shoved their way inside.

‘Sure, come in,’ I said, closing the door behind them.

‘Did you think we wouldn’t find you?’ Alexei spat at me, pacing with rage. His hair was slicked back, giving his face a rabid canine appearance.

‘No, not at all.’ My voice was blank and cracked with tiredness. ‘But I had to move suddenly and I thought you’d eventually call me anyway. You still owe me a passport after all.’

‘Don’t... get smart with me, you fucking
bitch
! What was all that shit we hear over the recorder? You try to run and hide, yes? We need you to get recorder from Noel’s office, you just forget about that?’

‘No, I didn’t forget. Someone I didn’t want to found out where I lived and then I had to move.’ I folded my arms, infuri­ating him with my calm. ‘Is this about something else you need me to do or did you just want to give me a telling-off in the middle of the night?’

With a snarl, Alexei whirled around and grabbed me by the throat, dragged me to my knees and screamed into my face, ‘
Fuck you!
You know I could
kill
you, bitch. I will
rip your fucking head off
! You do what
we
say; you are
mine
! When we do not need you any more I WILL FUCK YOU UP, you
fucking whore
, I’ll make you suck my
fucking dick
because
you do what we say
! You
understand
!’

I couldn’t breathe.

Jamming my tear-streaked face into his crotch: ‘
You fucking understand?
I will tell you what to do tomorrow, and
you will fucking listen
! You
understand
?’

Isaak was silent.

‘You
fucking
whore.’

Alexei dropped me, threw me to the floor like a mannequin, and then the two of them left.

I hadn’t even had the sense to plead for my life, I’d been so taken by surprise.

Shaking, I scrabbled back in the direction of the door to check it was closed and locked, but they wouldn’t be coming back tonight. They wouldn’t need to. They’d made their point. The longer I sat there trying to stop myself from counting and fighting for breath the more my throat began to hurt, and I stood up on unsteady legs to go and get a glass of water.

I took the glass into the bathroom to wash my face and had to look away from my red and puffy-eyed reflection.

Sitting down on the bed and rocking backwards and for­wards, I smoked a cigarette, frantically inhaling the smoke into my lungs as though it was fresh air. One dagger was under my pillow and the other was in the bag of money.

I was going to have to kill them all and that was the moment I decided.

There was a voicemail from Alexei the following morning that I didn’t listen to. I changed into my suit and the persona of Detective Naoko Mishima and headed straight out to meet Mark, who was driving us to Feltham once more to talk to Leo. Feeling pessimistic and disheartened, I didn’t speak much in the car.

There was a faint ring of bruises around my neck but they were covered by a yellow chiffon scarf that didn’t suit me.

‘Kenneth Gordon was raised in Kent,’ Mark told me, doing the talking for the both of us. ‘No children; he has, er... sperm count problems. Married for thirty-five years to the same woman, Madeline Gordon, but she was hit by early onset dementia at the age of forty-six. She’s fifty-one now and had some in-house care. But a few years ago she had to be moved into a home. It’s pretty sad.’

‘How do you find all this out?’ I asked, unsure whether to feel sympathy for the man I already felt as if I knew, but who might be the wrong man...

Sick wife who needs round-the-clock medical attention.

And what if it wasn’t him?

What if I killed him and it wasn’t him?

‘I’m trying to find out if he’s ever worked as an informant or if he’s ever sold info to anyone I know,’ Mark said, ignoring my question. ‘If he has, it’s only a matter of time before I find out. There’re only so many people an officer of his rank would talk to. I mean, there’re only so many people I know who could
afford
him. Nic would be one, but he uses someone else.’

‘Sounds common,’ I remarked with a dark smile.

‘I’d tell you how common, but you’d never call the police again.’

‘I wouldn’t anyway.’

‘They have their time and place.’

‘Do you think Leo will talk to us?’

A pause. ‘No. But it’s worth a try. Maybe appeal to his conscience if he has one.’

‘Do you think he will talk to us if I tell him the truth?’

‘Well, there’s a time and place for that too.’

Mark left his car in the visitors’ parking and walked us through the same doors as last time. The same warden looked me up and down and the same one took us through to the interrogation room while trying to see down my shirt.

‘You should try wearing that to work.’ Mark snorted as we sat down to wait for Leo. ‘Must be the air of professional corporate woman. Look at these guys: they’re just
gagging
, no pun intended, to lie down and have some girl walk up and down their backs and whip them.’

My dream about Caroline from the night before sprang to mind and I had to look at the floor. It was unnatural, surely, to find another human being so fascinating when you had never even spoken to them.