Текст книги "Hard Fall"

Автор книги: P. T. Reade

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 6 страниц)

FOUR

It was a comfortable betrayal.

Three days after the two police came by my office and tried to suffocate me with a guilt trip about Anthony Taylor, I got another knock on my door. I was taking practice shots with my new camera, getting used to the zoom, flash, and all of that stuff. It was another Canon. I had never considered myself loyal to any brand, but for some reason, I found cameras to be the exception. I was also nursing a hangover from pounding beer the night before. It had been a rough night – one of those where the memories of Sarah and Tommy were demonic poltergeists haunting my apartment. Forcing me to remain in limbo between sleep and consciousness.

I looked up to the door, somehow certain that this would be the two cops again. Maybe they found my name somewhere else in Anthony’s personal belongings.

I almost didn’t answer it but figured that would be stupid. And besides, I still felt as if I owed Anthony something.

I was relieved to see that the two cops were not standing there. Instead, there was a short but muscular man in his forties with thinning midnight black hair and intense eyes. Most people would have been alarmed by his intimidating appearance, but I knew differently. Amir Mazra was one of the kindest and most insightful men I’d met. He was the owner of the restaurant below and originally from Iran or Afghanistan or somewhere like that. Right then I realized I’d knew little about the Middle East and felt ashamed for a second.

“Hey Amir,” I said.

“Thomas. Come on. Let’s have lunch.”

“Downstairs?” I asked, looking to the floor. “No offense, but I smell it every day. It smells delicious, but I’ve had my fill.”

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go out. Your choice.”

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.

He thought about this for a moment and answered slowly. “I haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said. “And when I have, it’s usually watching you go past the fire escape window, stumbling up the steps.”

“Is this an intervention?” I asked him, laughing humorlessly.

“No. It is an invitation to lunch from a man that hopes you see him as a friend.”

I nodded, reminded at how well Amir was able to push bullshit to the side and get sentimental in a way that was not only intense, but heartfelt. He was, in a way, the only living connection I had to my New York roots.

“Steak?” I said, realizing that I was in fact suddenly starving.

“Turn the lights off,” Amir said. “Don’t waste electricity.”

I looked back into my office and flicked the switch. “You’re my landlord,” I said, “not my Mommy.”

“Yes, but saving money on electricity will help you stop taking crappy jobs like this one with Anthony Taylor.”

“You heard about that, huh?”

He nodded. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

***

“I’m done with cases like that,” I told Amir as I polished off my very average meal. The comment was random, a stark contrast from our reminiscing about the past. But I knew why Amir had wanted to have lunch with me. He was checking up on me, plain and simple.

“Good,” Amir said. “I’m glad. But can I ask why?”

“Well, what if this little discovery did push Taylor to kill himself? Without the work I did for him, would he ever have gotten the proof?”

“You can’t do that to yourself,” Amir said. “Why heap guilt on yourself? You’re carrying enough of it already, don’t let it poison you. Besides, I thought you came to London to relieve the grief, figure things out. Not to add to it.”

“Yeah, that was the plan.”

The waiter came by and took our dishes. He also brought me a third beer. Amir glanced at it sadly. He waited for the waiter to leave before he asked me, “Thomas, are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a very bad lie.”

“You’d prefer a good one?"

“I’d prefer the truth. Why do you continue to do this to yourself?” Amir asked. “All you do is drink and look at those pictures of your wife and child. Neither of those things will bring either of them back, so why do you put yourself through this?”

“I’ve got to.”

“You see the tragedy of all this, my friend, is that you don’t. Go home, find some help. There’s nothing for you in London anymore.”

I swallowed some water, washing down a bite of falafel. I looked Amir in the eyes. “I need to know who did this to them.”

“And all this excessive drinking? You think this will help your investigation?”

I grimaced. “I sleep better when I’m loaded,” I said. The dreams seem to go away. And when I’m awake, the memories don’t hurt as bad if I’m drinking.”

“So this isn’t a purposeful self-destruction? You’re medicating yourself?”

“You could say that.”

He looked to me with the unconditionally loyal eyes of a dear friend. Ever since I had saved his sister, Amir had treated me like family. He joked that we had become soul brothers because I had unintentionally followed him across the globe. “I didn’t know you were a doctor, Thomas,” he finally said.

I sighed. I knew he was right. I was never going to be able to solve Sarah and Tommy’s case if I kept drinking the days away. “I think I have been purposefully putting it off,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” Amir asked.

“I’ve just been going over these case files over and over again. I haven’t been making any forward progress. You’re right. If I want to get to the bottom of this I need to kick the drinking, shape myself up. Then I can start for real.”

Amir sighed, disappointed. “And then where will you be? Still obsessed with your past. Do you think Sarah would want to see you this way? No, she would want you to move on. Focus on your present; your future.”

Not that I had much future, I thought. At least not in London. Even if the cops didn’t deport me, I was going to run out of money soon. Eventually I was going to have to figure out how to get some cash flowing in. Still, the thought of letting Sarah and Tommy’s case go cold made me hate myself. “No,” I shook my head. “This is too important.”

“Why?” Amir demanded. “Why is it important to chase the killers of the dead? What do you hope to accomplish?”

“Justice.”

“You don’t want justice, you want revenge. And with revenge you will find only more pain and more guilt.”

“What would you have me do, huh?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You seem incapable of helping yourself. Maybe you should try helping others.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean use the talents God gave you. You’re a brilliant detective, Thomas. My sister owes her life to you. That is a gift I will never forget. Use your skills to help the living. Become a proper investigator.”

I sneered. “I’m retired, Amir. Even if I wanted to do what you’re suggesting, I don’t have any authority. Especially not out here.”

“Fine,” Amir sank back in his seat, putting one long arm up on the back of the booth.

“You’re right about the drinking though,” I admitted. “I’ll get dry.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes, and because I’m spilling all of this crap to you, I leave you in charge of holding me accountable.”

“I look forward to it,” Amir said. “Now, go ahead and finish your beer. If I’m being held accountable, it will be the last one you have in quite some time.”

“Fair enough,” I said, grasping the glass and taking a huge gulp.

***

Of course, Amir couldn’t see me all of the time. Not when I’m sitting in my dank little apartment with my fridge full of beer and my nearly full bottle of whiskey. I also knew that he was the responsible type who left for home at a decent hour…so if I decided to head out to a bar, there was no way he’d know.

Cheating on that little commitment I had made to him heaped even more guilt on me, but that was okay. By then remorse and I had become close. I’m not sure how I could function without it.

I didn’t feel too bad about the thing with Amir, though. I did intend to find my family’s killers. It was just the drinking thing I had told a little white lie about.

I was acting out on that lie, knocking back my fifth beer of the night (which was probably my ninth or tenth of the day), when someone knocked on my door. It was after ten at night so having a visitor was strange. Hell, having a visitor at any time was strange. Curious, I stood up…a bit too quickly. I had forgotten about the couple of shots of whiskey I’d downed. It caught up to my legs, and I damn near fell down.

I steadied myself, waiting for the knock to come again. “One minute,” I hollered, totally surprised by how buzzed I was. I wasn’t quite drunk yet, but I was quickly tipping over to that side.

I gathered my momentum and headed through my office for the door. I estimated that about fifteen seconds had passed since the knock had come. I opened the door slowly, still uncertain who could be coming to visit at such an hour.

When I stepped out and looked over the rail to the street below, the light was bad, the shadows blanketing everything, and the weak light from the lamp at the end of the street doing nothing to help. Faintly, I caught a glimpse of a woman’s figure halfway down the street. She looked to be in a hurry. Seeing as how there was no one else on the street within the immediate vicinity, I assumed this was the woman that had knocked on my door.

I nearly called out to her, but my tongue was far too lazy from the booze. Instead, I watched her slink out of view, swallowed by the shadows. I made a “huh” sound as she got into a car on the curb. She didn’t even look back in my direction as she started the engine and drove off. I watched her headlights flick on, pointed further down the street. Then she turned the corner and was gone, leaving behind nothing but darkness and the patter of rain.

What did she want with me?

I shrugged and then closed the door. Sure, an unexpected visitor at such an hour was strange, but it wasn’t enough of a mystery to keep me awake… or sober.

***

I stayed in the following day. I laid up in the apartment, staring blankly at what passed for daytime television on the scuzzy TV set I had found in the closet when I moved in.

I gave some thought to my late night visitor, trying to figure out who it might be. The only thing I could figure is that maybe Anthony’s wife had found out where I lived. Maybe she had come by to give me a piece of her mind and then chickened out when she heard someone stumbling towards the door.

The real question was why she had knocked on my door only to run away before I could answer. Isn’t it obvious, you drunk? I told myself. She heard you stumbling around in here and she got scared.

The stream of ideas came and went, fading in and out during the day. It was what Sarah would have called a Wasted Day – one of those days when you do absolutely nothing. It’s a waste of time, a lurid sort of nothingness.

Somehow, night came. I sort of recalled eating lunch, and I know I had a dinner of god-awful mac and cheese. I had considered heading to the pub, but I hadn’t drunk anything all day, and I figured what the hell? Maybe I could give my promise to Amir the old college try after all.

I also know that I spent the wasted hours of that day thinking about Sarah and Tommy. I recalled the details of their case files. I had photocopies of the files in my closet (a gift that the Metropolitan Police Department didn’t know I had), and I knew I could go to them whenever I wanted. I also knew every line by heart, every gruesome heartbreaking detail. Every Photograph.

The Blackened room. Sarah’s ruined body sprawled on the sofa. Tommy, face down on the floor, left hand outstretched clutching his favorite orange toy gun.

There were no answers to be had there. If there were, then I was apparently not a good enough cop anymore to figure them out.

I decided to head to bed early. Maybe a restful night’s sleep would help to re-orient me. A good sleep, a huge breakfast…and then perhaps the next day I would do as I had told Amir. I’d start really working on the case, interviewing their old neighbors or Sarah’s former co-workers. Then, after some real, sober police work, I might find myself with some kind of lead.

As I was heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I caught a flicker of light outside of my grimy living room window. Someone had pulled to the side of the street to park and —

I froze for a moment in front of the window. It was the car from last night – the car the woman had gotten into after retreating from my door. I saw it just enough in the scant light from the lamppost. If she was trying to be sneaky, she was doing a piss-poor job. I stood there and watched her, waiting to see if she would get out. If she did, the interior light would kick on, and I might be able to get a good look at her face.

But she didn’t. In fact, I don’t think she even bothered to kill the engine. She apparently changed her mind about meeting me again. She pulled away from the curb less than thirty seconds after parking there. I watched her taillights fade away in a swirl of dazzling red that reflected from the drizzling rain.

I retired to bed as I had originally planned, but sleep was a long time coming. I kept seeing those red taillights and knew that something peculiar was going on.

Who was this mystery woman?

FIVE

Smoke and taillights.

The next day was better in a few ways. I went into the office with the files on my family and went over it all again. There was nothing new, of course. They had died from the fire at the house. Sarah had been hit over the head first. No signs of rape or much of a struggle. Cloth under Tommy’s fingernails where it is assumed he fought off an attacker. Even at the age of ten, my son had been willing to die to protect his mother.

And where had I been when they had been killed right in their very own home? I knew the answer. It was one that disgusted me and that I had been living with ever since. It was the sole reason for the guilt I carried – the reason that going through these files was like having someone suffocate me as I read.

I’d been on the other side of the Atlantic.

Sarah had once told me, “If you can’t do the smart thing, do the right thing”.

What was the right thing to do here? Was I wasting my time by being halfway around the world to investigate her death?

I grabbed a lunch of Pita and Falafel at Amir’s restaurant, partly because it was close but mostly because it was free, then I stayed in the office for ten hours. I did some new research online, finding nothing. I made notes, cross-referenced things, and even tried creating a timeline of events on the day they had died.

Night came almost too quickly, and when I looked out to the streets and saw that it was dark already, an idea came to me. I shut my computer down, locked the office, and headed down through the closing restaurant. I noticed that Amir seemed in good spirits with his staff. He didn’t even look skeptical when he spoke to me. Not once did he ask about my drinking or how I had slept. I guess I was looking better than I had when I’d had lunch with him.

I did feel better. Especially now that I had a steady idea in my head. The notion had nothing to do with my family’s case, but I thought it might go a long way in getting my head clear and setting me back on a motivated path.

I headed out to my Toyota and drove around the block a few times scoping the scene. When I came back to my street, I parked at the end behind one of my neighbor’s cars and some large industrial bins. I sat there and ate some sandwiches I had picked up at a gas station, looking to the mostly empty streets around me.

The meandering, tight knit London streets made it hard to see much in terms of oncoming traffic but I was confident in my location. It had been a long time since I had been on a true stake-out, and it felt good to be back.

I sat there for almost an hour and a half before the woman’s car arrived. I’d had a hunch that it she would show up again. She’d come two nights in a row…so why not a third?

Her car passed mine and crept towards my apartment. She pulled to the curb 20 yards ahead of me and stepped out. The interior light of her car came on when she opened her door, and I saw a couple things in the dim illumination. She looked to be in her mid-to-late fifties. She was wearing a luxurious coat that looked like it might be worth more than my car. She had pretty blonde hair cut in a simple fashion. I didn’t see much of her face, just the taught line of her lips drawn down into something that wasn’t quite a frown.

She stepped up onto the sidewalk, headed for the alley that led to my apartment. When she disappeared out of sight around the corner, I placed my hand on the door handle, ready to open it if she remained out of sight for more than thirty seconds.

But she was back within ten seconds, apparently having changed her mind. I wondered why it had been so easy for her to come to my door and knock two nights ago but now found it harder. There were far too many questions, and I knew from experience that it would only frustrate me to try to figure them out on my own. So I didn’t bother.

Instead I watched her walk back to her car, get inside, and sit for a moment. Her shoulders sagged and her head was bowed. After a while, she started her engine and pulled away. I let her get a good distance ahead before I rolled out behind her. I kept a safe distance and followed her car, watching the taillights flickering in the steady to-and-fro of my wiper blades.

Christ, is it ever dry here?

It had been a while since I had tailed anyone, but I felt the old familiar rhythm kick in easily. I let a few cars weave in and out between us as I followed her north. She drove for twenty minutes before she turned into a suburb filled with houses that all looked identical to one another.

I followed cautiously as she neared a cul-de-sac and turned into a driveway. I passed her as a garage opened and she parked inside. I came to the end of the road, keeping my eyes on her in the rearview. I turned the car and wound back through the street. I maintained a comfortable speed, not wanting to draw her attention.

As I passed her house, I was able to see her again, but only from the same side as before. I was pretty sure I had never seen this woman before.

So then what the hell does she want with me?

It was a good question, but I wasn’t going to press it tonight. If she was somehow afraid to speak to me, I certainly didn’t want to go up to her door and ring the bell. I passed her house, taking note of the numbers on her mailbox and the name of the street. As I did, my mind began to form the most basic semblance of a plan.

Halfway back to my apartment I decided that some mental lubrication might help stitch a plan together.

***

I managed to stay mostly responsible…meaning that there was no hangover the following morning, or maybe there was already so much poison in my body that I couldn’t notice anymore. I was tired though. I wasted very little time, sipping coffee and eating a fried egg as I typed the address from last night into a database that I frequently used but was not supposed to have access to. The software was similar to a Police database but offered forensic investigators, or individuals with enough cash access to a frightening array of information data mined from online purchases, credit card transactions, and government records.

I discovered quickly that the house belonged to a woman named Elizabeth Ellington. The name rang no bells, and as I replayed the events of the last two nights, a startling thought occurred to me: Anthony Taylor’s suicide now seemed like something that had happened in a faraway place.

It’s because I’m getting active again, I thought. Re-opening my family’s case and trying to solve my own little mystery. I feel…almost like a cop again.

It was a good feeling. I clung to it as tightly as I could. It was all I had.

It was still there when I took a shower and even more powerful when I headed down to Amir’s restaurant an hour later to catch him half an hour before he opened.

He poured us coffee which we drank at his ritzy little bar while his staff readied the place for the early lunch crowd.

Again, Amir didn’t waste his time asking me if I had been drinking over the last few days. I assumed he saw a still-developing change in me. We shared some small talk – about the damned rain and how the police had not returned to ask me more questions about Anthony – before I got around to the real reason I had come by.

“So, I get that this is a large town,” I said. “Very large. But I also know that you run a very successful business and are one of the friendliest men I have ever known.”

“Why are you buttering me up?” Amir asked with a raised eyebrow. His black bushy hair and dark brows giving him a fierce appearance belying his amiable nature.

“No butter. Just pretext,” I said.

“For what?”

“I was wondering if you might happen to know a woman named Elizabeth Ellington.”

Amir gave me a skeptical look. “It just so happens that I do. At least on paper. Several papers in fact, she’s quite well known in local circles. Why do you ask?”

“Can you keep it confidential?” I asked.

“Yeah…as long as you haven’t done anything you shouldn’t.”

“No. Nothing like that.” I mumbled, wondering what kind of man he took me for. I then proceeded to tell him about the events of the last three nights. As I came to the end of it – following her to her home and getting the address – he seemed puzzled.

“What?” I asked, noticing his look.

“Elizabeth Ellington is sort of a legend around here. She’s a recluse…a shut-in. The only time people see her around is late at night, when she goes grocery shopping at those twenty-four hour shops. She’s been that way for…I don’t know…probably the last ten years.”

“Why is she like that?” I asked. “Anti-social?”

“Her husband died of cancer…don’t remember what kind. And about two months later, her kid went missing. She just sort of shut down, I guess. She and her husband were borderline rich, so it made headlines in the local newspapers. Tragic stuff.”

“So why the hell would she want to speak to me?” I asked.

Amir shrugged. “She must have heard about the cop from New York that was in town. Just about everyone here in London with a badge looked into her kid’s disappearance and got nowhere.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Look, I’ve got to get to work. Keep me posted on this will, you?”

“Sure,” I said.

I finished my coffee and headed out to pick up some supplies I would need, now more fired up than ever that things seemed to be getting back on track for me. For once, I didn’t even mind the endless rain that had picked up to a steady downpour. Something was going on here and I was going to find out what.