The hush dissipated as the room went back to business and York slipped away unnoticed. This episode had darkened his heart that little bit, and for the briefest of moments he felt gratitude towards the person they were hunting. There were some things out there more despicable than murder, more loathsome. Making snuff movies and hiding them in your ten year old daughter’s bedroom was one of them.
5
York itched to be alone.
The lifts out of order, he took the stairs to his apartment. A tornado of desperation bubbled inside him, coiling carelessly around his insides. Sometimes he could suppress the jolts of pain. Sometimes it was pointless to try.
The index finger on his left hand began to twitch. This was a new development. He noticed it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, amazed no one in the Pit had pulled him up on it.
Straight after he and Newport left the Fullers’ apartment, they went their separate ways. He’d gone straight from the scene to his flat in Pimlico where he lived alone.
His block was nothing special, his apartment less so, but it was a place to get his head down, and a place he invited no one. It was the only personal space he had left.
Pushing his way in through the front door, he toed a bunch of post from his path and stumbled down the hallway to the kitchen. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, but food shopping was rarely on his agenda. The shelves were bare, the fridge likewise.
Thoughts of food dismissed, a torrent of pain struck him below the stomach, like a spike thrusting through his liver. He wouldn't be able to put it off much longer.
Staggering groggily through to the bedroom he tugged off the sweat-damp trilby and took a seat on the end of the unmade bed, a tangle of sheets pushed back against the headboard. His breathing was heavy. He stared at the blank canvass of the wall in front of him, eyes fixed on something beyond. Shoulders stooped forwards, he clung onto the whispery tendrils of denial with all he had.
The hands of the clock ticked on. He had no clue how long he stayed like this, staring in this transfixed, almost hypnotic state.
He waited, trying to recall the face that haunted his dreams each night. He had photographs but they were carefully boxed and taped, stored elsewhere. All the walls in the apartment were bare. Since moving out of the family house and into the flat, he had refused to display memories. Photographs were a fabrication. They spoke of a time when smiling was a part of daily life, laughter was commonplace.
As though on cue his wife’s face emerged from the brickwork: painfully beautiful smile, eyes infinitely sad. He knew it was an illusion, the product of a damaged mind; she had been gone a long time, but still Leanne came to him, sometimes Frasier too.
Two years ago his wife had gone on a business trip to Germany, and because York had been up to the eyeballs with an investigation, she had taken their four year old son with her. Saying goodbye to them on that chilly April morning had been the last time he’d seen them alive. That was twenty-something months ago. Leanne’s body turned up in Hanover six weeks after the disappearance, gagged, hogtied and dumped in a park like some fly-tipped mattress. Frasier was still missing.
Leanne had been badly beaten and dealt a crushing strike to the back of the neck. Frasier had been taken. Where to remained a mystery, and those German idiots hadn't shone any light onto Frasier's vanishing act in the eight sleepless months of their investigation.
He couldn’t imagine what his son might be enduring. Sometimes, he wished him dead. Surely now, dead was better than enduring.
Snapping out of the vision, he tore himself away. He pulled out a small wallet from his jacket, unzipped it and laid it gently on the bed. Tugging off his coat he rolled up his sleeve. He didn’t want to do this to himself anymore, but his half-assed attempts at going cold came with wracking pain and despair.
Unsnapping the spoon, he squeezed a small vial of water into it. Next he unwrapped the small brown stone, about the size of a tic-tac and the last he had, and dropped it into the water. The flame danced as he struck the silver Zippo, the orange tongues begging for vocation. He heated the solution, watching carefully as the brown stone dissolved. As the water began bubbling brown, he soaked it up with a cotton bud and drew from it with the syringe.
He paused and checked himself. Then he pushed the needle into an unhealed puncture mark in the crux of his arm and drew a trace amount of blood. The needle was flush. Exhaling deeply, Leanne’s face emerged from the smoky confines of his mind. She was smiling.
Pushing down slowly on the plunger, he fell back onto the bed and into the open arms of an uncaring oblivion.
6
Dropping the Ford into reverse, Newport slotted the car expertly into the vacant space. The car park was quiet, which probably meant the wine bar would be too. She was relieved. High volumes would be a distraction, and her next words would have to be chosen carefully.
The back of her head stung like hell. A lump had graced its presence just below her crown and she massaged it. For a second she remained behind the wheel and focused
