Kaleidoscope (6 page)
He ran his hands through his thinning grey hair and held his head tightly for a moment. He needed to think. Picking up the glass of ice, he went back into the kitchen and poured himself another vodka which he quickly downed. There had been other requests over the past four years by the man calling himself 'Concerned Citizen'.
In the first letter he had outlined what he knew about Langton's secret and then requested that he photocopy various documents pertaining to Hellam's illegal business activities. He hadn't been specific in his request; he simply required anything that could prove Hellam's criminal activity. At first Langton had assumed the unknown man was punching above his weight and ignored the letter, despite the distinct sense of uneasiness he felt regarding the details of his secret.
The second letter had arrived two weeks later, this time it had given specific information about Langton's dark past and was much more threatening in tone. C.C. had given a definitive time limit for Langton to get the information to him or, he said, he would have no reservations in going to the police with the information he had found regarding Langton's dark past. Langton had sweated over the letter for two days before he began to photocopy documents, which he then sent to the PO Box provided by CC.
Langton knew that if Hellam ever found out about what he was doing then the best case scenario would be that he would receive a severe physical punishment before being thrown out of the business. However, he also knew that the most likely consequence of his actions would be much harsher, and as Hellam liked to say, '
definitive'
.
Langton had done everything he could to find out who owned the PO Box. It had been registered in the name of C. Citizen with a false address and was closed down the day after the documents had been received. Different PO Boxes had been set up each time Langton had been told to provide further information. Langton had even found the location of one of the
PO
boxes and watched it for several days off and on, until a courier collected the documents and took them to a central depot where they were unobtainable and untraceable as far as Langton could see.
He wasn't sure how the information he was providing was being used. He knew the police didn't operate like this, or did they? He guessed it could be somebody from a rival drug supplier, but if so, they weren't acting on any of the information they were receiving. It had been four years now, it was as if C.C. was simply gathering and holding onto the information for no good reason.
He sat back down on the sofa and felt the tension rise in his back as he thought about what to do. What could he do? Perhaps this would be the last time, he told himself and closed his eyes, knowing he would be unable to sleep tonight.
Chapter 6
The half empty bottle of whiskey was on the table in front of Lewis as he sat, hunched forward, with his head resting on his arms. The kitchen in his flat was small and its table resided in the corner of the room with a single chair. Lewis raised his head. His eyes felt sore as he wiped them with the back of his hand and his head was spinning but that didn't matter. He picked up the whiskey and took another mouthful straight from the bottle then unsteadily placed it back on the wooden surface.
He had returned home from his parents in a state of numbness. He couldn't even remember the drive back to his flat in his father's car; it was a blur of passing scenery and flashing memories. His mother had explained that Hannah had been found six days earlier in her flat. Lewis had flown into a rage after hearing the news that she had been killed almost a week before and he hadn't been told. He asked his mother why she hadn't called to tell him to come home, but she had simply said that she couldn't bear for him to hear the news over the phone. Lewis had paced the room trying to make sense of the situation. How could she be dead? What had happened?
His mother had told him that Hannah's flatmate, Kelly, had found her when she returned from work. Hannah had apparently been strangled in her bedroom. Lewis shook his head frantically as he was told the information; he didn't want to know the details and yet he
needed
to be told everything.
His mother told him that the police had arrested a man who lived in the flat next to Hannah; someone called Craig Blaine, they were certain it was him. Lewis felt angry at the mention of a name that meant nothing to him; a name that he had never heard before and held no other significance. His mother told him that Hannah was being cremated the following Wednesday. Then, as Lewis felt the anger slip and distort into a sense of hopelessness and pain, he finally allowed tears to fall.
When his father dropped him off outside his flat, he had asked if he would be okay. Lewis remembered saying something, but he wasn't certain of the words, then he had taken the lift up to his flat, went inside with his bags and collapsed onto the floor - his world had just been shredded into hundreds of fragments and he couldn't think about anything except the face of the woman he loved as the life was squeezed from her.
He got up from the kitchen table, taking the bottle with him, and stumbled into the front room. He collapsed down into another chair and sipped on the whiskey.
Craig Blaine.
He kept repeating the name in his head and felt the rage inside grow with each repetition. He wished he could have met the man before the police had arrested him; he wished more than anything that he had a chance to get close to him. But then what would he have done? Would he have harmed him? Would he have killed him? Lewis thought about this in his drunken haze, telling himself he could do it, but was that because he had no chance of achieving it now? He had often heard that killing somebody, no matter how much you hate them, is something that some people just can't do. It's a myth that killing is easy. He vaguely remembered reading an article in some long forgotten magazine where a statistics expert gave various facts about how the rate of soldier's performance in war doesn't match with expected results. When they are told to kill, a majority of them, either purposely or subconsciously, aim off target. Killing is not something that comes as naturally as some people might believe.
As he thought about this diluted, half remembered fact, his mind drifted back to Craig Blaine and he became certain that he could kill that man given half a chance. But he knew he shouldn't be dwelling on these thoughts of revenge; that wouldn't help Hannah now. He had no chance of getting to the man responsible anyway.
He got up, swaying, and went into the bathroom. He gazed at the face staring back at him, eyes red, swollen and several days worth of stubble lining his chin.
"Pathetic," he said to his own reflection. "You're no killer, even if you wanted to be." Lewis sipped the whiskey as he stared into his own eyes. He had always been proud of being the kind of man he was; he didn't have a violent bone in his body - he was a pacifist. He knew he was no killer but at that moment, he wished he was.
You should have been there. You could have stopped this if you were there
.
He leaned forward and rested his head on the cold glass of the mirror for a moment. He felt his grip tightening on the bottle of whiskey when he suddenly turned and yelled something as he threw it against the ceramic tiles above the bath. It shattered into a thousand pieces and amber liquid sprayed the room.
"You should have been there!" he screamed.
He stood in the centre of the room for a few moments, looking at the floor as tears fell and hit the tiles by his feet. He turned and ran the cold tap for a few seconds before splashing his face with water. He felt drained, as if some unknown force had just evaporated the last of his energy and concealed it - lost forever.
He walked back into the front room and his eyes fell on his laptop which was resting on the floor next to the sofa. He slumped down in the chair, picked up the computer and with drunken, uncoordinated movements, he booted it up for the first time in three months.
He had checked his e-mails on his mobile phone while away, but they would have remained on the server at his internet service provider after he read them. After it had finished loading, Lewis began to download all the old e-mails onto his laptop. There were over three hundred, which took a few minutes to fully download. Lewis scanned them with hazy, alcohol soaked vision, resigned to the fact that most of them were promoting offers from shopping websites or other general spam. He sorted them by sender and looked down the long list. He had received around fifteen e-mails from Hannah while he was away and, despite the certainty in the back of his mind that it would be unwise to go through them all again, he began to read them one by one.
Hannah had asked how he was getting on and mentioned how jealous she was of him for travelling the world. She had also written about her new boyfriend and how well things were going with him; something Lewis didn't particularly want to read about. She said he was a little older than her and lived a different life to the one she was used to; implying on a number of occasions that he was quite wealthy while never being direct.
As Lewis scrolled down the e-mails and absorbed her words, he became aware of a change in tone as the dates passed by. He had been vaguely aware of such a change when he originally viewed them while abroad, but here, reading them one after another in quick succession, the change seemed less subtle and to leap from the screen.
The first ten e-mails or so were the usual, upbeat writings that Lewis had grown to love. But the last few seemed to drop in tone and emit an air of melancholy; nothing specific, but a general ambience of sadness. Hannah stopped mentioning her boyfriend and Lewis thought that perhaps this change had come from the fact that they had broken up. Then, as he read the final e-mail, he became even more confused:
Dear Lewis,
I expect that you're reading this somewhere in
Fiji
or some other unimaginably remote location - actually I think you mentioned that you'd be in
New York
around now. I hope everything is still going well, I can't wait to see you when you return in a week or so. We should get everyone together and go for a night out to celebrate your return.
Things are okay here... the usual, I suppose you could say. Work is busy and it's taking up a lot of my time. Kelly is seeing someone now, so she is out quite a bit. I think she is going to be moving in with him soon so I'll be back to paying the full rent. It shouldn't be a problem though.
I wish you were home now. I have a bit of a dilemma which I'd like to share with you to be honest. It's about my boyfriend. I found something on his laptop that... well let's just say it was pretty horrible. I don't know what to do about it and I just need someone to talk to.
Listen to me going on about my silly little problems while you're trying to enjoy yourself. We can talk about it when you get back.
Can't wait to see you,
Love Hannah xxx
Lewis couldn't believe he had missed the content of this e-mail when he had first read it while still in
New York
. He could vaguely remember receiving it, but at the time he was in the middle of a bustling city and must only have scanned it. He usually savoured every word Hannah wrote him, but this one slipped through somehow and with the power of hindsight, the e-mail took on a new, darker tone. On the surface it still appeared to be nothing particularly remarkable, but the paragraph which described her discovery on her boyfriend's laptop, struck Lewis with unexpected force.
He thought about it for a while, going through several scenarios in his mind - what could she have found? He thought that perhaps she may have stumbled across some pornography and become upset with her boyfriend. But why would this have been the kind of thing she needed to share with someone? She may have argued about it with her boyfriend after discovering it, but it would be unlikely that she would want to share this intimate detail with Lewis. It must have been something else.
Lewis closed the laptop and placed it back on the floor, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, the alcohol in his blood suddenly seeming a little less potent. He thought about the timing of the e-mail - it had been sent two days before she was murdered. He went through the series of events, as if to feed the spark in his mind. Hannah discovered something 'horrible' on her boyfriend's laptop which was bad enough for her to mention it in an e-mail to Lewis. She called it a dilemma; what dilemma? Was it something she felt the police needed to be informed about? Was she confused as to whether she should inform the police or not? Then, two days after all of this, she was murdered.
As Lewis paced his flat, his thoughts returned to Craig Blaine. Perhaps he was her boyfriend and she had discovered something on
his
laptop. If so, did the police know about this?
He walked the room in circles for a few more minutes, his drunken mind becoming alert. He went into the kitchen and made himself a mug of strong black coffee.
***
Lewis saw Kelly sitting at a table in the corner of the bar as soon as he walked in. He managed a smile and a wave as he approached.
"Hi," he said, forcing the smile wider. "Can I get you a drink?"
"No thanks, I'm still working on this Coke."
Lewis nodded, went to the bar and returned with his own glass. He hugged Kelly and sat down on the opposite side of the table.
"How have you been?" she asked with a sympathetic tone.
Lewis nodded, "Holding up, how about you? I can't imagine what it must have been like to find her."
"It was awful, you have no idea. I can't get the image of her lying there out of my mind. I can't imagine why someone would do that to her."
Lewis sipped his Coke. Kelly had been one of Hannah's closest friends at university and their living together to save on rent had seemed like the perfect solution when Hannah had suggested it. Lewis had known Kelly for many years and they got on well, although they had little in common and their relationship was usually aided by their mutual friend.
"How was your trip?" Kelly asked, making her best attempt at changing the subject to something lighter.
"It was good thanks... I wish I had never gone on it now though."
Kelly shook her head, "There was nothing you could have done Lewis. Whoever killed her chose a time when there wasn't anybody around."
Lewis looked at her. "What do you mean 'whoever'? I thought they had the guy who did it? Craig Blaine, your next door neighbour, that's right isn't it?"
Kelly looked down into her glass for a moment before nodding.
"Yes, yes I know. I'm just being silly."
Lewis leaned forward. "What do you mean Kelly? Is there something else?"
"No, no of course not. I'm just surprised Craig could have done something like that."
"Did you know him well?" Lewis asked.
Kelly shook her head, "Not really, no more than saying hello in the hall. He's an odd guy, no doubt about that. He's in his forties and still lives in that little flat with his mother. He would always have this odd smile on his face whenever I saw him. I know Hannah was creeped out by him now and again too."
Lewis's thoughts became caught up on the e-mail Hannah had sent him two days before she had been killed.
"So Craig wasn't her boyfriend then?"
A short burst of laughter escaped from Kelly. "No way, he wasn't boyfriend material, at least not for Hannah."
"Then why are you so surprised that it was Craig? If he was so strange and creeped you both out, then why not him?"
"I don't know, he was odd for sure. But also, he didn't seem like he would harm a fly; he spoke so softly... he just seemed like a gentle giant. He wasn't blessed with the greatest social skills, that was all."
