Approaching Zero (18 page)

“In and out. In and out. In and out,” Kathy mumbled to herself as she walked all the way back to the building, not realising that any sound was coming out of her and equally unable to stop it. When she arrived at Miles’s block of flats, she tried the door handle and wasn’t surprised that it wouldn’t budge. She then pointed her finger to the silver button beside number 32 and pressed it. She waited, perhaps unrealistically hoping to hear the little voice of Josh Fletcher welcoming her to his rescue, but there was only silence. She then began to try other buttons but all of the other flats were also silent. She considered going for the jack in the back of her car and would have been within her rights to do so, to smash her way into the building, but decided to venture round the back first. The door she found there, however, was also locked fast.

“Goddammit!” she spat and made her way around to the front again. She had now spent more than ten minutes trying to get into the building and her anxious excitement had been replaced by a creeping sense of dread. And it was still so bloody hot. Every movement she made was inhibited by the sun beaming down on her head. If it would just cool down for five minutes she could get her thoughts together. But it was relentless.

The jack
, she finally resolved. There was no other way, but then a little tinny voice came out of the intercom.

“Is that you?” it questioned.

Kathy looked all around her and then took a chance, pushed the speak button and simply said, “Yes.” Whoever the old woman was expecting, it clearly wasn’t her, but she had to take the opportunity and she was stunned when she heard the buzz of the old woman releasing the lock. She was almost too surprised to open the door and grabbed the handle just at the end of the buzz. As the door opened, she looked up and silently gave thanks to a god or to the old woman or to the clouds that had been towed across the sun just in that moment and the subsequent breeze that had never been more welcome.

Once inside, Kathy ran up the stairs and was soon outside Miles’s flat. Even if she didn’t know the number she would have known that this was the one. There were cigarette butts and sweet wrappers circling a filthy welcome mat and rippled glass panes in the front door that were too dirty for even shadows to be seen beyond. Kathy wasted no time before banging on the door. “Josh! Joshy! It’s okay, Joshy! I’m here to take you back to your parents.” She pressed her head to the door but heard nothing and then the dawning realization that she had no idea what she would find beyond hit her. For a start, he might not be there. There was no way that Miles wasn’t their culprit, but he may have been keeping Josh elsewhere, or he, heaven forbid, may have already got rid of him. But then Kathy remembered that Suri had seen him tied up, alive, and it was only a few minutes after this that she cast her spell on him. But tied up and alive didn’t mean that he hadn’t already been molested or tortured. And she had seen Miles at the hospital. He may have been in pain, but he was still capable of moving his body and he was angry. Who knew what kind of effect this would have had on the young boy?

Kathy opened the letterbox, but her vision was blocked by bristles. She tried to make a space in them but still she could see nothing and when she pressed her ear to the space there was still no sound to be heard. “Josh!” she screamed into the flat. “I’m coming, Josh,” she said and began searching for a hidden key, around the dirty mat and on top of the doorframe. All she found was more muck and grime. She tried forcing her meagre body weight against the door, but she wasn’t even strong enough to make an impression on the wood let alone bust into a flat. She stood catching her breath for a few moments, both hands on her head and then sprang into action again, marching back through the hallway and out into the day again, propping the front door open with a Yellow Pages. She ran the length of Miles’s road and around the corner to where Suri was still waiting for her in the Mini.

“What is going on?” Suri pleaded as Kathy popped the boot open.

“Just stay here,” Kathy answered then grabbed the jack and slammed the boot shut. “We’ll be back in a minute,” she told Suri and again missed the distraught expression on the young girl’s face. On the run once again, Kathy returned to the flat, skipped up the stairs, two at a time, and powered the jack at the thick glass panes of Miles’s front door. At first they stubbornly held firm, even chipping slightly as if to insult her efforts and then the crunch of a crack rang out through the stairwell and one more thud sent the glass flying inwards. Kathy forced her arm in behind it, reached down, and opened the door.

Once inside, the smell was repulsive and she couldn’t tell if this was real or imagined as there really were stinking, mouldy food plates on every surface and bottles that looked as if they could be holding nothing but piss. Why he would be collecting his own piss was anyone’s guess and Kathy progressed with her arm over her mouth. The greyish, dusty wallpaper peeling off the walls gave it a piteously, shabby appearance; a small sixties fireplace by the back wall and the furniture were no better; there were two rickety chairs with no padding, a badly stained coffee table in a corner and a few books and kids’ magazines scattered about. A little kitchen area invading the living space was another source of stink, with the full sink a home for rats and other vermin, as was a little cubicle off to the back of the flat containing a toilet that no sane human would want to sit on—smudged with faeces and stained yellow. Kathy was beginning to understand why he used bottles. A large, worn, dirty sofa was the focal point of the living space with a print cover that was old and spattered with rough holes. Down by the side of it stood a small table with a laptop on it, his gateway to ecstasy, but Kathy imagined that it had been cold ever since he got his own real live child to do with what he wanted.

“Josh!” Kathy called again. She was apprehensive about trying the only closed door in the flat, but she had no choice “It’s okay, Josh,” she repeated and curled her hand around the handle. “I’m coming!” she gripped tighter and slowly lowered the handle. “Josh!” Rather than entering the room, everything seemed to close in around her and shatter into darkness, forcing her to drop to her knees. She reached up to the back of her head, where a searing pain exploded her skull, and when she took her fingers away she saw that they were covered in blood. As she turned her head she saw the vague shape of a man in a hospital gown before losing consciousness.

Kathy could feel where she was before she could see; not psychically—her abilities didn’t work in that way; she could physically feel the cold of plastic under her skin and yet she was sticking to it with sweat on her bare arms, which were now tied behind her. The pain in her head and the dawning awareness of her situation prompted her to keep her eyes shut as she regained consciousness, but she couldn’t deny her predicament forever and there was still the question of Josh to be answered. Slowly she released her grip on her eyelids and the tiny world around her came into focus. The plastic wasn’t simply under her body; it was all around her, covering the floor and the walls and even the ceiling. It was a plastic-covered chamber, emptied of everything but herself, lying unceremoniously on the floor, and the feet in her line of vision that were promptly joined by an angry face leaning down to greet her. He was quite a sight in his gown and boots.

“Fuck you wanna come snoopin’ round here, lady? You’re seriously stupid if you think I didn’t clock you at the hospital, dumbo!” he said, scrunching up his features seriously and then his face softened far quicker than was possible and he broke into fits of laughter. “Me and Josh there got things to do,” he said cheerfully and stood up again before saying, “And we don’t need bitches like you spoiling our fun.” The last three words were delivered with pauses allowing for three pounding kicks in Kathy’s stomach that not only knocked the wind out of her but caused more pain than she was equipped to deal with and sent a frenzy of blood to her head that didn’t know where else to go to hide from the fear, and she was almost unconscious again. She let out an excruciating cry and the man mocked her with his own screams.

“Ha! It’s all soundproofed,” he shouted. “We can be as loud as we want.” And then he began to sing at the top of his voice. The bottom half of Kathy’s body was now bundling under her, trying to sooth her stomach, but forcing her face further onto the plastic, her eyes now completely shut. But they snapped open when she heard a little voice behind her.

“’S alright,” it said quietly and she felt what was either a little foot or little hand against her back.

The sound of the little boy’s voice went some way to soothing her pain. “Joshy?” she said quietly and he pressed harder on her back by way of an answer. For either of them to say more would be invited the psychotic wrath of Miles Denver, but this was what she was here for. Josh was alive and she was here to get him out.
I can do this
, she silently said to herself, but her body told another story, tightly bound in a room modified for death.
I can do this!
And then another thought occurred to her; her mobile phone was in her back pocket. She straightened up her body and shifted her bound hands further down her back toward the pocket, but Miles spotted the play immediately.

“Looking for this?” he giggled and dropped her phone on the plastic in front of her. As joyful as he seemed, Kathy took hope in the fact that he was wriggling awkwardly again, as if the itch and pain in his pants were returning. But then the fear took over and she ground her eyelids together as his heavy boot came down on top of the phone just inches from her face. Why hadn’t she called Spinoza before this and let him deal with it? She wasn’t equipped to take on a killer. But then she had no idea that he would be back. Why had she left the car so far away? Suri would have no idea what was going on. And she didn’t even have a phone to call for help if she did know. For someone desperate to stop this evil, she had certainly done everything wrong. And now what? She hardly dared open her eyes. The little boy on the floor behind her was braver and God only knew what he had been through, and still he was reaching out to sooth her. The thought gave her just enough strength to open her eyes and there he was again, bent down to her eye line.

“Morning!” he smiled. “Now what was it? Oh, right, yeah, sorry love, but I just gotta get rid a’ya. Nufink personal but I’d rather put my dick in a beehive than you and, well, me and Josh ’ere was getting on fine before you came along. Nufink personal.” He continued to reassure her that it was nothing personal as he reached over to the other side of the room and brought a massive sledgehammer into her line of vision. Kathy immediately began to struggle to free herself, pulling on the rope at her wrists and kicking out her bound legs, but she couldn’t even shift position let alone move from the spot.

“Ha! Keep still, ya silly bitch,” Miles giggled heartlessly and dropped his booted foot down on her neck. Completely helpless now, Kathy could only watch as Miles swung the mallet behind his head and smashed it down in her direction. A nightmarish crunch rattled the foundations of the room and echoed through the empty space. And then followed the sound of screaming—Kathy screaming. If she was screaming then she was still alive. This was the thought that was racing through her mind.
If I’m thinking then I’m still alive.
Far from feeling the pain of a shattered skull, the pressure of the boot on her throat was released, but she hardly dared open her eyes again—that is, until she heard a familiar voice behind her.

“It’s okay, you’re both safe.”

Kathy could now see Miles convulsing on the floor in front of her with the throngs of a Taser protruding from his chest. The sledgehammer had come down just inches from her face—so near that she couldn’t quite gather her thoughts at the idea of how close she had come to death.

“You’re a crazy lady,” the voice said warmly, attached to meticulously polished black boots, and then the face of DCI Spinoza came down to her eye line.   

Chapter 18

When Kathy’s hands and feet had been untied all she wanted to do was look behind her at the source of the little voice. In that split second, she prayed that she would see a healthy child, or as healthy as could be expected; she just needed to know that she had got it right, that she had got there in time and he could go back to his life and put it all behind him. He was young enough to lead a normal life as long as Miles hadn’t been able to… She didn’t want to spell out the thoughts even in her mind of what that monster might have done to him. She just wanted him to be okay.

She hadn’t even completely sat up and turned her head when little arms where thrown around her. Taken off guard, she wasn’t immediately able to respond to Josh’s massive hug, but she eventually managed to pat his back before pulling him at arm’s length to assess him.

“Are you okay?”

Josh nodded seriously.

“He didn’t… do anything to you? He didn’t touch you?”

Josh now shook his head. “Are the twins here?” he asked. “I shouldn’t have hit Tracey,” and then his angelic little face, so fresh and innocent, crumbled into tears and he nestled himself into Kathy’s chest for comfort. This time she had no choice but to put her arms around him and as he sobbed, she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down her own face. How long they sat like that would be unknown to both of them, but they were eventually moved when a female police officer draped a blanket over Kathy’s shoulders and helped her to her feet. Josh was led away, hopefully to be reunited with his parents, and Spinoza arrived at her side.

“Kathy, I know this is difficult, but I need your help again.”

As Kathy’s eyes met his, he winced, and Kathy knew that she must have looked as awful as she felt, but she nodded and managed a cooperative smile. Over Spinoza’s shoulder, Miles was on the floor, sitting upright on the plastic with his hands cuffed behind his back and a police officer standing behind him to make sure that he stayed put. He was wriggling like a naughty schoolboy made to sit still, kicking out his legs in front of him.