Girl Seven (20 page)

‘Jesus,’ I said to myself, blinking back tears. ‘Stupid.
Stupid
.’

I left the building, trying get Caroline’s expression as she’d looked at me out of my mind, and Mark rang me.

‘Are you at home?’ he asked, meaning
his
home.

‘Um, no, I’m... out for a walk.’

‘I’ve got some things for you to look at, and we’re seeing Leo again tomorrow. Can you be back within half an hour?’

‘I guess.’

‘Make sure you’re not followed. I don’t think Mr Machete is going to be the last one they send looking for you.’

I glanced back up at Noel’s flat and realized it was likely being watched. It was muggy: the hottest day of the year so far, but overcast. Everyone in my line of vision was sweating but despondent in the lack of light. No one was searching for me here.

I looked up again, realizing that Caroline would be able to see me from Noel’s window, and hurried across the road towards the tube station.

I was still mentally comparing myself to Caroline, even after I’d returned to meet Mark at the new apartment. My overnight bag was still in my new bedroom, packed with the essentials and full of money, ready to leave again at a moment’s notice. I hadn’t stepped foot in the kitchen, so reluctant was I to accept the imposition of this new space. My old flat, tainted as it was by my attempted murder, still felt like my base.

Mark had arranged a load of photos on the floor, paper-clipped to different pieces of paper. It was a strange, unnerving, unsmiling collage of middle-aged male faces.

‘Who are they?’ I crouched down and lifted one of the photos.

‘DCI Edward Casey. Age: 58.’

‘They’re a compilation I got together of a section of the DCIs working in London around the time your parents were killed. From what you said I reckoned that if he is police... and that’s a big
if
... we’re likely looking for a plain-clothes high-ranking officer, so this is a selection. These are the high­est ranking; I’m working on getting names of lower-ranking officers from other boroughs.’

‘How the hell did you get these?’ I sat cross-legged, mouth open in disbelief. ‘You can’t just walk into stations and get this stuff.’

Mark shrugged, but he looked pleased with himself.

‘Recognize any of them?’ he asked.

There were too many to stand up and cast a casual eye over them searching for a face, so I moved on to my hands and knees and worked my way through each one methodically. I didn’t entirely trust my memory. Whoever that man had been back then, he could look different now. I might have made up his eye colour or exaggerated the description of his hair. What’s more, these men all looked the same.

‘No... No. Um, no, not him.’

I moved photos to my left, picking my way left and right down the rows. The further I progressed, the more frustrated I became with myself. Maybe he was here, and I’d just over­looked him?

‘No, I... Shit, what if he wasn’t even a police officer? He was alone – he could have just posed as one. The file could just be... lost.’

‘Well, hold off on the panic at least until you’ve discounted this lot,’ Mark said with a smile.

I looked sideways at his legs and carried on.

Just under halfway through, almost dead in the centre of the living-room floor, I faltered at the eyes of someone I recognized. It was of man with black eyes, a bald head and—

I’m truly sorry for your loss, Kiyomi.

I picked up the photo and held it close to my face, heart pumping hard and repelled by the image.

‘DCI Kenneth Gordon. Age: 60.’

Older than I thought or remembered...

I put the photo down to my left.

‘Him?’ Mark asked, leaning down.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, lying and unsure as to why.

Had I just reached a point where lying came so easily that I did it now for no good reason? Or was there a good reason? I couldn’t tell any more.

For the sake of appearances, I put another couple of photos down on my left. They looked like him, could be easily confused, but not by me. Rage was coursing through me the likes of which I hadn’t felt in years, before everything had become so deadened. I couldn’t pick up another photo for fear that my hands would shake and give me away. I expected to feel more relief, but there wasn’t relief; there was just the anger, the desperate all-encompassing need to know, stronger than ever before.

I wasn’t sure whether Mark had noticed. I kept my eyes down. He probably had. He knew I was lying. I wondered if he’d accuse me of it, or just hold the knowledge within himself until he knew what to do with it.

Eventually, I stopped.

‘Can I keep these three?’ I asked, still on the floor. ‘I want to look at them some more, try and get... something. I’m not sure. I only met him once and it was just after it happened; everything was a bit... fast.’

‘Sure.’ He took them off me briefly to look at the names. ‘In the meantime, do you want me to start researching them? Addresses and work and a more detailed history?’

I nodded. ‘If you like.’

Mark held up the first man I’d picked out and said, ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

I suddenly wished I wasn’t still on the floor.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You worry me, Seven,’ he replied, turning the photo over and reading the details underneath, ‘because you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.’

I wasn’t used to being called out and my first response was to redden and push away the threat of brattish tears.

‘I did already know that it was likely to be one of these few, if not him, because...’ Mark took Nic’s drawing out of his pocket, unfolded it and held it up against the photo of ‘DCI Kenneth Gordon. Age: 60’.

It was a pretty decent match.

‘Why did you lie?’ Mark inclined his head at me, but he didn’t look grave or even annoyed.

‘I was afraid you’d want to be the one to kill him instead of me.’

I hadn’t been sure that this was the reason until I said it out loud.

He sighed, but lightheartedly. ‘Look, I’m your servant here, Seven. I do what you want. You don’t have to lie to me. I’m not here to interfere, I’m here to help you. As long as you let me advise you because we don’t want you getting arrested or anything unnecessary like that... Also, please keep in mind that we don’t even know for certain it’s him yet. But it’ll be easy to find out, I think.’

I hadn’t expected this response. I was glad he hadn’t been cross with me. ‘Is it normal for people you work for to want to kill someone themselves?’

‘I don’t usually get that so much, but bear in mind, people who hire me usually want me to remove people precisely so they don’t have to. It’s a matter of forensics. I’m simply less likely to get caught because I’m, well, professional.’

A falsely modest smile and spread of the hands.

‘But I don’t think you’re strange for wanting to,’ he con­tinued, ‘if that was the actual question you were asking. We all have to vent, in certain ways. Do you want to keep this photo?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll just look at it too much. Can I keep the rest of the info though?’

‘Yeah sure, I can get another. I have them all as PDFs, I just printed these off.’

DCI Kenneth Gordon.

I was glad I wouldn’t have the photo. I already felt the creeping obsession with looking into and into his face as if I could find some proof there. It was better to let Mark leave with all the temptation to dwell on it and try to provoke some emotion to drown in.

‘OK. Well, be careful in the meantime and I’ll call you tomorrow before we go and see Leo in the afternoon, OK?’

I nodded.

Mark gathered up the rest of his compilation. The floor was slick wood and it took him a while to grasp the edges of the papers. I wondered if he was the sort who would keep them, as mementoes.

‘You work with Russians, right?’ I asked suddenly. ‘Noel said.’

I tried to make it sound like casual conversation as I stood up with my hands on my hips waiting for him to go, so I could pursue my own line of investigation.

‘Yeah, sometimes. Why?’

‘A few of them come in the club sometimes, that’s all. Just wondered if you knew them. They’re called Alexei and Isaak and there’s another one, older. Think they’re brothers.’

‘There are far too many Russians called Alexei.’ Mark smirked. ‘You might as well ask me if I know a guy called Dave.’

‘Figured.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘OK.’

I counted down ten minutes on the clock as I changed into a clean set of clothes from my bag, and left the apartment again, with a renewed sense of purpose. Nic’s drawing was in my bag. Fuck Noel hiring Nic Caruana. He wasn’t a superhuman. He was a man and men were all movable objects. So much more movable than any of them would care to admit.

He looked surprised to see me. It was a Sunday so I knew he’d be home.

I was only a little offended that he hadn’t called me, even to chat, but then he seemed shy. Maybe he was just one of those guys who needed more time to work up to a bold move like that?

‘May I come in?’ I found it cute how his expression became coy and awkward. ‘I need to talk to you about something. It’s kinda work. Your work, not mine.’

‘Um, Seven,’ he said, saying my name as though it was a word he didn’t understand. ‘Of course.’

Darsi Howiantz’s house brought a sense of calm over me. I felt safe here. There were no negative associations or memories for once. It was so eccentric, like another dimension, that I could almost kid myself we were no longer in London.

The room in which he kept his landscape of papers and his models was kept in dim light, with the curtains shut.

‘Can I sit down?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ He picked up a pile of books from the chair I’d sat in last time. ‘What was it you wanted to talk about?’

‘You work with the police, you said?’

‘Yes, I do.’ He positioned himself across from me, also in the same place he had sat last time. ‘It’s one of the only ways I can apply my research. Otherwise I’m just... blagging my way through an easy life of academia.’

A nervous smile.

‘Have you ever worked with a DCI called Kenneth Gordon?’

There was a flicker of recognition that he didn’t seem to realize was visible to me.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘So you know him?’

‘I’m... not sure. Why do you ask?’

I cast my eyes about the room. Did I tell him the truth or not? Was lying safer or was it just the preferable easy option? The lazy option.

After a long pause, I took Nic’s drawing out of my bag and handed it over to him. It was the original. Mark had the photocopy.

‘He could be responsible for a violent crime and I was wondering whether you knew him.’

Choosing his words with care, Darsi held the drawing closer to the light emanating from his desk lamp. ‘If he is responsible for a violent crime, isn’t this a matter for the police?’

‘No.’

There was almost no way for me to tell the truth without coming off like a delusional female. When I was going through a phase of watching grotesque and disturbing horror movies every night, not long after I’d first moved into my old flat and was trying to force my body into feeling a genuine human emotion again, I’d watched something called
Rosemary’s Baby
.

It scared me more than most of the others. I wasn’t scared of the supernatural but I was scared of the people. I was scared by the way a female was never to be believed; called hysterical, insane, delusional, dangerous; locked-up, medicated... It was my worst nightmare. I had dreams about it for weeks. In those dreams something faceless was trying to kill me and when I protested a police officer locked me in a cell, in the dark, for the thing to find me.

I began talking, deciding that I had to, whether I came to regret it or not. ‘A couple of years ago some guys killed my whole family while I was out. When I was in a Relatives’ Room waiting for... whatever, just waiting... a man came in and questioned me alone. He asked me if I’d seen anything and if I knew anyone who’d witnessed anything. But it wasn’t normal. It might
sound
normal, OK, but it wasn’t, it was bad. It was like I was being threatened. So I said I didn’t know anything and he left. It was that guy, right there, Kenneth Gordon. DCI. Except he didn’t introduce himself as that when he came to question me. He didn’t introduce himself at all.’

Darsi stared at the drawing.

‘Um...’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, this is a lot to take in.’

‘I know, I’m sorry and I know this sounds like I might be making things up or that I’m hysterical or something but I promise you I’m not. This actually happened and that’s why I need to know who he is and—’

‘It’s a very serious accusation.’

‘I know. That’s why I can’t go to the police.’ I paused and added an embellishment to reassure him. ‘At least not right away.’

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. ‘What do you believe will be the result of you asking me about him? I have heard of... I’ve come across him, yes. But what would you want me to do about it?’

I didn’t have a lie for that one.

‘You’re the only person I know remotely connected to the police and... I guess I just wanted to talk to someone about it who knows him, that’s all.’ I hated that I felt stupid, even though I knew I was in the right. ‘Also, not long after my parents and sister... another boy was killed. He was the only one who saw the guys who did it, and he was killed by a kid who’s in a juvenile detention centre who
I know
was working on someone else’s orders, someone who’s promised him some sort of compensation if he keeps quiet.’

Darsi observed the drawing again.

I looked away. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

He put his glasses back on, took them off, rubbed his eyes again, put them back on. ‘I’m not sure what to believe. Do you have evidence for this?’

‘Well, it’s happened to me, isn’t that enough evidence?’

‘No, unfortunately, not in a court of law. That
it’s happened
won’t be enough.’ He seemed to rue the terseness that crept into his voice.

Standing up, he took the drawing with him to his bureau, where he rifled through what looked like old case folders and photos and professional memorabilia.