Felicity Young - An Easeful Death

‘Hooper.’ Breathless, she was all too aware of the hand creeping up her leg, kneading her inner thigh like a cat.

‘Stevie, I’ve just had a thought.’ Monty, oh God. She pushed De Vakey’s hand away and edged further down the bed.

‘Do you know if anything of significance was discovered at Michelle’s apartment?’ Monty asked.

‘I don’t think so. They dusted it for prints and only found Michelle’s and her cleaning lady’s. No sign that anyone else had been there in a long time.’

The silence stretched from Monty’s end of the phone. He said, ‘Are you okay? You sound out of breath.’

‘I’ve just been wrestling with Izzy.’ The lie scraped her throat like dry toast.

‘And you always telling me not to stir her up before bedtime.’

‘Yes, well...’

‘Shall I say goodnight to her?’

‘She’s just run off to the bathroom.’

After a beat Monty said, ‘I gather they didn’t find the safe.’

She stood up and turned her back on De Vakey. ‘Safe, what safe?’

‘It’s in the cavity of the dividing wall between the front entrance and the living area,’ Monty said.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of any safe.’

‘I’d be interested to know what’s in it. Could you go and have a look? The combination’s 270568.’

Her eyes scanned the room in a panic. ‘Pen?’ she mouthed to De Vakey, wincing at the sound as he climbed off the bed.

‘The combination’s her birthday. I put the safe in for her myself a few years ago.’ She took the pen from De Vakey and repeated the number as she wrote it on her hand, then read the address back to him to make sure she’d got it right.

‘Is Dot staying over?’ Monty asked.

She hesitated, glanced at De Vakey. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. You could check on that safe now, then. You’ll have to call in at Central for the key and security doo-hickeys. The place is like Fort Knox. Ring me back even if you don’t find anything important, I don’t mind if you wake me. And give Izzy a hug from me, okay?’

She said she would, then clicked the off button.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

She couldn’t look at De Vakey as she scraped her hair back into its ponytail and rearranged her clothes. When she’d finished he took his phone from his pocket, showing her that it had been switched off.

‘Turn yours off next time,’ he said with a glint in his eye.

If only it was that simple.

16

Research has shown that serial killers have a tendency towards low arousal levels, meaning that they need more stimulation than the average person to obtain any degree of satisfaction. This leads to impulsive and thrill-seeking behaviour that is further exacerbated by an inhibition of the moral voice of reason.

De Vakey, The Pursuit of Evil

Stevie’s mind was still churning as she turned the key in Michelle’s apartment door. What would have happened if the phone hadn’t interrupted them? Would she have had the strength to pull back? She smiled to herself—who was she kidding? Her body was already growing warm with the thought of what might have been.

But what she saw next put an end to that train of thought and left her standing in Michelle’s small marbled entrance, blinking and stunned.

The lights were on and a pair of men’s trainers stood to attention at the side of the door.

Had someone been here since the search? Was he here now?

She contemplated phoning for assistance, but hesitated. She could think of no explanation for her presence in Michelle’s apartment that wouldn’t get Monty into even deeper trouble.

She dropped the phone back into her bag and took a step forward. The light must have been left on after the morning’s search, she reasoned; there couldn’t possibly be anyone here now. And the trainers—hell, what was the point in speculating? She was going in.

The entrance was separated from the living area by a wall with a lighted alcove, just as Monty had said. In the alcove, on a white painted shelf above the hidden safe there rested a heavy vase of blown glass. Despite the fungal coating of fingerprint powder the vase burst with colourful prisms of light, patterning the pale walls with rainbow dots much like the ones cast by her mother’s crystal ring.

Although she had convinced herself there was no one in the apartment, she still rued the fact that Central dees didn’t carry guns without due cause. If they did, she would have drawn hers now, just as a precaution. As it was, she took the can of pepper spray from her bag and held it in front of herself like an actor in an insect spray commercial.

Her footsteps across the honey-coloured floorboards were silent in her air-soles, but her heart beat like a tom-tom in her chest. For someone who wasn’t nervous, she was doing a fair imitation.

A tinted chandelier bathed the apartment in an eerie yellow radiance. At the other end of the living room, French doors led to the balcony and a panoramic view of the City of Lights. Outside, car lights rippled like a creeping black tide up the dark windows of the surrounding skyscrapers. Other apartment blocks loomed towards her like ships in the night.

She called out loudly, ‘Armed police! Come out slowly with your hands away from your body!’

Silence.

She tiptoed into a tiny bedroom, looked under the bed, then into a wardrobe large enough to conceal a midget. She did the same in the larger spare room, knowing before she started there would be no one there, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable.

In the main bedroom she stood rigid before the mirrored robe. If someone was in there, she reasoned, he’d probably be more terrified than she was. She imagined a pair of darting eyes staring back at her through a chink in the door.

She grabbed a blood-red throw rug from the foot of the bed, counted to ten in her head and yanked open the sliding door.

Her breath tangled with the panicked cry of the shadowy figure as she hurled the rug at him. He was caught off guard and blinded and she had no trouble dragging him out of the cupboard along with half-a-dozen entangled coat hangers. With an expert kick, she had him face down on the floor with an arm up behind his back.

She breathed easier once she’d snapped on the handcuffs and patted him down, finding nothing except a wallet and some lock-picking tools. She ripped the rug off his head and ordered him to roll over.

Stevie stared down at the man for a moment, knowing the pale frightened face and the magnified blinking eyes instantly. He was Martin Sparrow, the albino cleaner from Central. Their prime suspect, the last person they knew to have seen Michelle alive.

Killers often returned to the scene of the crime, but the earlier search had ascertained that this was not the crime scene. Perhaps he wanted to get close to Michelle’s things, to savour the atmosphere and relive the experience. They had surmised that the killer might have controlled himself at the scene, saving his release for a later time. The thought of what he might have been doing in Michelle’s apartment made her skin crawl.

Sparrow turned his face away. She hauled him to his feet and shoved him onto the sofa in the living room. Ripping the bottle-thick glasses from his face she held the pepper spray to his skittering eyes.

‘You know what this is?’ she said evenly, congratulating herself for not giving away the tingling bursts of fear still coursing through her body.

The large fish-like eyes stopped moving and focused on Stevie’s.

‘It means if you give me any trouble, I squirt this in your face. It hurts like hell and you’ll be temporarily blinded.’

Now the eyes creased around the edges as if she’d made some kind of an in-house joke. This show of humour was unsettling. She spoke through clenched jaws. ‘I’m arresting you for breaking and entering. You have the right to remain silent—something that you are obviously aware of—and anything you say may be used in evidence against you in court at a later date. Got that?’