Читать книгу A Bad Bad Thing - Elena Forbes - Страница 18

It was past five in the afternoon and already dark when Dan finally stood outside the house in Kilburn where Mickey Fraser was apparently now living. He and Zofia had started by driving to a house in Tooting, which they had on file as Mickey’s home address. But Mickey hadn’t been there for almost a year. It seemed that he moved flats every few months and they had driven from Tooting, to Clapham, to Cricklewood, asking for Mickey at every one, and had finally been sent to 20b Acacia Grove, Kilburn. This had taken up most of the day. The Kilburn address at least seemed promising; a woman at the Cricklewood house said that Mickey had called her only a few weeks before about forwarding some post to him there. Dan had insisted on Zofia going back to the office after that. He felt angry and disappointed in Mickey and he wanted to speak to him on his own. Mickey had been tasked with tracing Jane McNeil’s former housemates, Grace Byrne and Holly Crowther, as well as following up on the dead racing journalist, Kevin Stevens. He couldn’t wait for Mickey to decide to resurface in his own time; he needed to find out how far Mickey had got, particularly with Eve now on his back.

Mickey’s house was halfway along a terrace of tall, Edwardian red-bricks, most of which had been converted into flats with the front door up a steep flight of stairs. He pulled out his phone, switched on the torch and shone it over the dirty line of bells. A small, grubby card pinned to the top stated that flat B was in the basement. He went back down to the garden and found a short, narrow flight of stairs leading below, hidden behind a line of overflowing communal bins. Although basements were cheap and private – two reasons why they might appeal to Mickey – like a scurrying creature of the dark, it was appropriate that he would live in such a hellhole. He put his hand over his mouth, trying to block out the stench, as he carefully made his way down the slippery steps. The curtains were drawn, no light on inside, but that meant nothing. Mickey was probably sleeping off one of his periodic binges. It was dark at the bottom and it smelled even worse. The front door was tucked away deep under the stairs, in shadow from the streetlight above. Using his phone torch, he found the bell. He rehearsed in his mind what he was going to say if Mickey appeared and pressed it long and hard. He heard the buzz inside, but nobody came to the door. Music and voices drifted down from one of the flats above, but although he waited a good minute or so, no sign of life came from Mickey’s flat. Just so that he could tell Zofia that he had made sure, he thumped his fist loudly on the door, calling out Mickey’s name. He felt the door give a little under the weight of his hand and, in the pale wash of light from his phone saw that it had opened a crack. It seemed to be unlocked. He put his shoulder against it and shoved and this time it swung open, banging loudly against the wall behind. If Mickey was at home, he must have heard.

Dan reached inside the doorjamb and fumbled until he found a light switch. He flipped it down, but no light came on. Tentatively, he shone his phone inside and saw a little bathroom to the left, under the stairs. Fumbling in the dark he found the light cord and pulled it, but that didn’t appear to be working either. To the right was another door. As he pushed it open and stepped inside, a waft of cold, damp air greeted him. It had a musty smell, as though nobody had opened a window in a long while. He shone the dim light slowly around the room, illuminating a kitchenette along one wall, the counter clean and tidy, nothing in the sink or on the small draining board. He turned the wash of light on the other side of the room, where an old sofa and an armchair were grouped around a TV. The walls were bare and the carpet was cheap and threadbare, as were the flimsy, patterned curtains. It all had a transient feel and he wondered if Mickey actually spent any time there. If he didn’t, where was he? A printer stood on top of a filing cabinet, next to the chimneybreast, on the other side of the room. The drawers were hanging open and, as he crossed the room to take a better look, he saw that the carpet behind the sofa was covered with a mess of files and papers. It looked as though somebody had been searching for something in a hurry and a lamp had been knocked over and lay on its side in the middle. He picked it up, placed it on a side table, and clicked the switch. But it, too, was dead.

Wondering if Mickey had had some sort of a drunken tantrum in the dark, he called out, ‘Hello, Mickey. It’s Dan. Are you there?’ No reply.

A narrow corridor led from the room to the back of the house and what he assumed was the bedroom. He called out again, hoping to wake Mickey, if he was there. Again, no answer. He imagined Zofia at his shoulder, whispering in his ear. Go on, Dan. Don’t give up now. He must be in there. Maybe he’s ill. Maybe he needs help. What if he’s hiding from you? £500 is a lot of money. He knocked at the bedroom door, put his hand on the handle, then pushed it open.

The first thing that hit him was the stink. Urine. Vomit. Something even more unpleasant. The stale air was thick with it and it caught in the back of his throat. He wanted to retch and clamped his jacket sleeve over his nose and mouth as he shone the torch into the room. The small double bed stood at an odd angle away from the wall and clothes had been pulled out from the little chest of drawers and strewn around all over the floor.

It took him two steps to find Mickey. He lay on his side, on the floor behind the bed, naked apart from a pair of tight blue underpants, his hands and feet tightly shackled behind him to a kitchen chair. A pool of thick, dark liquid surrounded his head like a halo and his eyes were open, as far as Dan could tell from the swollen, beaten face, which was smeared with dried blood. His mouth was stretched wide, stuffed with what looked like a rolled-up sock, the toe poking out between his lips. Blindly, Dan staggered out of the room, through the sitting room, and into the bathroom. His phone clattered to the floor, as he fell to his knees and vomited into the toilet bowl. The smell from Mickey’s bedroom still filled his nostrils and his head was throbbing. He felt hot and cold all at once, the nausea coming in waves. He couldn’t focus. He couldn’t think. His first reaction was to run, but he couldn’t even stand up. Was Mickey’s killer still in the flat? He didn’t think so. The blood was dark and several hours old at least. When had it happened? He couldn’t get the smell of it out of his mind. He vomited again and closed his eyes, the image of Mickey still in front of him.

Eventually, the nausea began to fade. He sat back on his heels and felt around the cold floor in the darkness for his phone. Finding it, he switched the torch back on and pulled himself up to his feet. He had to clear his lungs. He stumbled back to the front door and yanked it open, letting in a wet gust of air from the street. He stood just inside the door for a few moments, breathing in and out to calm himself. His head was throbbing worse than ever. Somehow he had to work out what to do, but he couldn’t think clearly. He needed painkillers. He went back into the bathroom and shone the torch around the tiny room. It appeared to be untouched by whoever had been searching the flat and he was surprised, given Mickey’s usually dishevelled appearance, how orderly it was, with just the basic essentials neatly lined up on a shelf above the basin. A small, mirrored medicine cabinet hung over the bath, half hidden behind the shower curtain. There was nothing in it apart from some spare razor blades, a jar of Vicks and a large plastic tub of Advil, which he assumed was left over from a recent trip Mickey had made to the US. It would have to do.

Hands shaking, he fumbled with the childproof cap. As he finally wrenched it off, the bottle slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor, spilling a mass of small red pills around him that bounced like beads on the tiles, along with something else that made a click as it dropped. He shone the torch over the floor and eventually found what he was looking for lurking behind the basin. He picked it up and studied it. It was a little, red memory stick, almost the same colour as the pills. 128GB. For Mickey to have hidden it so carefully, it must be important. He slid it into his jeans pocket. Mickey had been a secretive sort and he imagined him having a whole host of little hiding places dotted around the flat. He wondered how many of them the killer had found – and how many Mickey had been forced to give away under torture. He downed a couple of pills with a handful of water and then splashed some more water on his face as he studied himself in the mirror, wondering what to do.

There was no point in running away. His prints were all over the flat. He had no memory of exactly what he had touched and he knew it would be impossible to get rid of them all. His prints were also logged on the national system, thanks to a charge of affray as a student, and it wouldn’t take long for the police to link him to the flat. He would have to call them, as soon as he’d worked out what to say. He smeared some Vicks under his nose and went back into the sitting room for a final look. There was no sign of Mickey’s laptop and he assumed the killer had taken it, along with any external hard drive. If Mickey’s mobile was still around, it would be in the bedroom, but he couldn’t face going back in there. He was feeling shaky again and was about to leave, when he noticed a piece of paper lying facedown in the out tray of the printer. He picked it up and turned it over. It was a printout of a race card from the Racing Post, showing the runners for the 1.50 at Ascot the previous Saturday. He remembered what Mickey had told him the week before, about needing some funds to go racing. ‘For research purposes,’ Mickey had said. He had only half believed him. He photographed it, then returned the sheet to the printer tray as he had found it. He had seen enough. He needed a drink. He would go and sit in the car, while he worked out what to do.

As he went outside, the cold night air hit him with force, along with another wave of nausea. He sat down on the steps outside Mickey’s front door and put his head in his hands. His phone started to ring in his back pocket. It was probably Zofia demanding an update. He decided he would have to speak to her and pulled it out but he didn’t recognize the number on the screen. He stared at it for a moment, then pressed the green button, putting it on speaker. A woman’s voice, low in tone and English, was saying something he couldn’t quite hear against the background buzz of traffic. He caught the name Sean Farrell, then the word ‘prison’. It took him a moment to realize it must be Eve West.