Питер Мэй - Lockdown

He pressed the STUDIO buzzer. And after a moment, Flight’s angry voice growled through the speaker grille, ‘What is it now?’

‘It’s Pinkie.’ There was a long pause before the buzzer sounded and the electronic lock clicked open. Pinkie stepped inside and flicked up the snib on the lock so that it remained unlocked when the door closed behind him. He hated being locked in. He remembered the cupboard under the stairs where his mother locked him away when she had her visitors. She didn’t want them to know there was a child in the house. But she had made it comfortable for him, with a light, and a drawing book and some games. And a mattress for him to sleep on. It was his little den, secret and safe. He had never minded being shut in there, until the night he heard her screaming.

Flight peered at him through the glass in the studio door, and Pinkie grinned behind his mask and waggled his gloved hands in the air. Flight opened up. ‘What do you want?’ He was careful to keep distance between them.

‘You had a visitor, Jonathan.’

‘A very rude policeman.’

Pinkie shook a finger of admonition at him. ‘Don’t be so judgemental, Jonathan. Poor Mr MacNeil lost his son today.’

Flight was unaffected. ‘Perhaps that explains why he was so rude.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He wanted to know if I knew Ronnie.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘That I’d never heard of him, of course.’

‘And he believed you?’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Why did he think you and Ronnie would be acquainted?’

‘Apparently Ronnie had my business card in his pocket.’

‘Ahhh.’ That explained it. Pinkie wandered across the studio and poked the exposed half of the brain with unashamed curiosity. ‘Is this real?’

‘Don’t touch it!’ Flight snapped at him. Then, ‘Did you kill Ronnie?’

Pinkie smiled. ‘I could do with a drink, Jonathan.’

‘I’m working.’

‘I could do with a drink, Jonathan.’ Pinkie repeated himself as if making the request for the first time.

It had its effect on Flight. He seemed nervous. ‘We’ll have to go upstairs.’

The living room of Flight’s apartment overlooked Old Brompton Road and was what the design magazines would have called minimalist . Bare floorboards, polished and varnished. Naked cream walls. A glass table and six chrome and leather chairs in the window. There were two red leather recliners with footstools, a long, low, black-lacquered sideboard, and a wafer-thin plasma TV screen on a chrome stand. The only art in the room comprised a couple of Flight’s own sculptures raised on tall black plinths. Pinkie looked at them with distaste. ‘I don’t know how you can stand to have that stuff in your home.’

Flight didn’t grace the comment with a response. ‘Whisky?’ He opened up the drinks cupboard in his sideboard.

‘Cognac.’

‘I’ve only got Armagnac.’ Flight sounded annoyed. ‘It’s very expensive.’

‘That’ll have to do, then.’

Flight poured a conservative measure into a single brandy glass.

‘Aren’t you going to join me?’

‘I never drink while I’m working.’

‘Make an exception.’ Pinkie walked to the window and looked down into the street below. He heard Flight sighing and taking out a second glass. The unaccustomed sound of a car engine rose from the street, headlights raked the shuttered shops opposite, and a vehicle pulled up outside the gallery. Pinkie pressed his face against the window to see who it was, and recoiled as if from a blow. MacNeil was stepping out on to the pavement. Pinkie turned quickly towards Flight, who looked up in surprise, his bottle of Armagnac hovering over the lip of the second glass.

‘What is it?’

Pinkie smiled. This was the bit he enjoyed most. ‘Time for you to feature in one of your own sculptures, Jonathan.’

MacNeil glanced up and saw that there were lights on now in both the studio and the apartment. He walked around into Cranley Place and pressed both buzzers. There was no response. He waited nearly thirty seconds before trying again. Still no reply. MacNeil was losing patience. He’d got as far as the King’s Road before the thought struck him. A thought so breathtaking in the scope of its horror that it was almost unthinkable. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. And so he had felt compelled to return, if only to clear it from his mind. And now Flight was playing games. He raised his hand to bang on the door and shouted, ‘Come on, Flight, open up!’ His voice echoed angrily around the empty street, and the door moved under the beat of his clenched fist. MacNeil froze, his arm still in mid-air. His surprise gave way to an immediate sense of misgiving. The door had locked behind him as he left. He was sure of that. He had pulled it shut. Tentatively he pushed on the door with his fingertips, and it swung in. He stepped into the hallway and saw that the lock had been put on the latch. He inclined his head and peered up the stairs. A light still burned on the first landing.

‘Flight? Mr Flight?’ MacNeil’s voice got soaked up by the carpet and went unanswered. He climbed the stairs slowly to the first landing. The lights of the studio shone brightly through the glass panel in the door, and MacNeil peered inside. There was no sign of Flight. He pushed the door. It opened and he walked in. The arm and head looked just as it had fifteen minutes ago. Flight did not appear to have done any more work on it. MacNeil looked around the other works in the studio with new eyes. A door at the back led to what appeared to be another room. MacNeil crossed the studio and opened it. In fact, it led into a large walk-in, windowless storeroom. There was a long wooden workbench, scored and stained, a huge vice, and all manner of tools hanging from nails in the wall. Knives, saws, several different weights of chopper, of the kind you might find in a butcher’s shop. A tray on the worktop was lined with scalpels of various sizes. There was an autoclave plugged into the rear wall next to an oscillating saw and a row of plastic bottles containing bleach. It was cold in here, the air sharp with the acid scent of disinfectant. And something else that MacNeil couldn’t quite identify.

Several opaque containers lined up along a shelf were labelled SPRAY PLASTIC.

MacNeil had a bad feeling about this place, like the touch of icy fingers on his neck. He shivered, and felt as if he were in the presence of something deeply sinister. There was an odd jolt, and the air was filled with a loud electronic hum and the rattle of glass. He turned, and saw that behind the door stood a huge refrigerator which reached almost all the way up to the ceiling. It was divided in two halves, upper and lower. He opened the upper door, and a light flickered on to reveal shelves full of bottles with glass stoppers. They were filled with various coloured liquids. There was a strangely familiar, if unpleasant, smell in the fridge. MacNeil turned one of the bottles around. Its label read Formalin , and MacNeil knew why it smelled familiar. It was the ever present perfume of the autopsy room. Formaldehyde. Used in medical laboratories and mortuaries as a preservative. Three small sausage-shaped objects lay in a glass saucer in the meat tray. MacNeil lifted it out and nearly dropped it. ‘Jesus Christ!’ His revulsion forced the words involuntarily from his lips, and his voice sounded excessively loud in this confined space. The three sausage-like objects in the saucer were fingers. Human fingers. He slid it quickly back on to the shelf and shut the door. He was shaking. He took a moment to compose himself and control his breathing before opening the lower door to reveal four deep freezer drawers. He hardly needed to open them to know what was inside.