Faceless, page 17
Max leaned over the table clutching at his chest, praying the pain shooting through it was a heart attack and it would all be over fast. But then anger flared over mortification, anger hot and bitter, and it was as if some dam had broken and every hurt, every soul-shattering ounce of grief and guilt that had lain on him these past two years burst through.
‘You selfish, fucking bitch.’ And he too was on his feet, finger pointing. ‘You think this is all about you? You weren’t there. You weren’t the one that got to watch her die, you weren’t the one that got to see that mongrel bastard psychopath slit her throat.’ As the words escaped his lips, he was thrown back into the memory with such force his back hammered into the wall, his eyes clamped shut, and the vision that detonated in his head took him there, back to that one moment in hell, and he could smell the mustiness of the house, see the cigarette smoke-stained walls, the light diffused through the drawn purple curtains, the grinning teeth of the man, his face obscured by the shadow of his hoodie, always those grinning, disembodied white teeth, as he held her in front of him, defenceless, her hands tied behind her back, he saw him grab her head, one hand under her chin, the glint of the blade, the terror in her eyes, the thin red line across her neck that opened like a mouth when he pulled her head back further, the hot, metallic smell of blood, the sound of his own screaming.
Bradley
He loved this. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d experienced such clarity and focus. It was as if his processors were in overdrive and running at one-hundred-percent efficiency. He’d machined his way through the Red Co report in two hours, and it wasn’t some cobbled-together rubbish, it was good, really good. He was taking one last double-check through the numbers to make sure he hadn’t missed anything obvious when a whump beside him on the desk made him jolt with shock. He whipped his head around to see what had made the noise, and was surprised to see a large cardboard box. He looked up above the box and saw the puggish face of Crampton, dangerously impassive.
‘Clear your desk, you’re fired. You’ve got five minutes before the security guard arrives to escort you off the premises.’
It took Bradley a few moments to register what he was saying. ‘What do you mean, I’m fired?’
‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? No one talks to me that way and gets away scot-free. You might think you’re shit-hot with your threats of unions and lawyers. Well, bring it on, because I can tell you now, you will be the first to give in, it will be you who runs out of money way before this company does, and it will be you who doesn’t know what’s hit him.’
Bradley sat stunned for a moment; he hadn’t anticipated this. In his mind there had only been one path for the bastard to take, and that was to capitulate. Like all bullies, he’d cave in at the first sign of true opposition. He looked at the now-smirking face and knew he’d made the wrong judgement. But he wasn’t about to run off with his tail between his legs, no; the old Bradley might have done that, but he was through with being pushed around, by anyone. He clenched his jaw and took several large breaths before he stood to his feet and eyeballed his assailant.
‘You can’t fire me, Crampton. You can’t fire me for telling the truth. What’s the matter? Can’t you handle it? Is that what this is, you can’t handle anyone telling it like it is? Standing up to you? Well you wait, you’re not the be-all and end-all, there are other people who will be bloody interested to hear about this.’
Crampton smirked. ‘Oh, yes? And if you think you can go crawling to the head above me, think again. Who do you think I’ve been on the phone to all morning? I’ve fully briefed them all on your performance back there, and the way you encourage dissent against the company. And I’ve filled them in on your less than stellar employment record. They are one hundred percent behind me: your arse is gone. Pack your things and get the fuck out of my sight.’
Bradley’s jaw clenched hard and his hands balled into fists. He could imagine how it would feel to smash them into that smug, self-serving face; the heat of rage that built in his chest was urging him to take the bastard, and show him exactly what would hit him. Just as he was about to lose the battle between anger and good judgement, out of the corner of his eye he saw the security guard making his way across the room. He looked around and saw the ashen, staring faces of his colleagues, and he had the sense to recognise this was one battle that would have to be fought another day. He would stay the hero.
Quietly, so no one else but Crampton could hear, he uttered under his breath, ‘You wait, you fat, smug shit. This isn’t over, this is far from over. You wait, you bastard, you just wait, and you watch your back.’ With that he whacked the box with the back of his hand, and it knocked the penholder over with a clatter as it sailed through the air and hit Crampton in the guts. Then he grabbed his wallet and his car keys and stormed for the door. He was metres from the exit when he stopped and turned. Bugger this, he wasn’t going to go down quietly, he had to make a stand.
‘Crampton,’ he yelled, loud enough so every head in the office whipped up. He waited until he had all of their attention. ‘You can’t fire me because I now refuse to work the outrageous amount of overtime you demand of your staff, time that is outside of my contracted hours. This is utterly illegal, and bullshit. You will hear from the union, and you will hear from my lawyers. This is not over.’ And with that exclamation mark on his performance, he stood tall, his shoulders back, and slowly walked out of the room.
Max
‘Jesus, Max, you pull yourself together or I’ll call the mental-health team, you know I will.’
He became conscious of the fact he was curled up in the foetal position under the table. Meredith was crouched down at his side, one hand resting on his hip. Shit, how the hell did he end up on the floor? His head was pounding and it felt as if someone was stabbing an icepick behind his left eye.
‘Speak to me, Max.’ Her voice was full of concern. The sound of it brought everything back in a flood, but although he physically wavered under its onslaught and it made the stabbing sensation worse, he found he could face it. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and held his head in his hands.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Jesus, I thought for a minute there you’d had a stroke or something.’ She sat on the floor opposite him, and they rested in uncomfortable silence for several moments. ‘Have you ever had counselling since Jess died?’
That name, it reverberated around in his head, each echo amplifying the previous one so it became louder instead of fading. He tried to blink it away.
‘They made me. It didn’t do any good.’
Again the pause.
‘Look, I’m sorry if I—’
‘You were right. You were absolutely right, about all of it.’ The self-flagellation hurt like hell, but in an odd way it dulled the pain at the same time, a numbing that was welcome relief in his new state of heightened awareness. The tsunami of facing the past had passed, and he felt like a survivor who had been caught in the deluge, but who was alive, if battered, exhausted.
‘You can’t go on this way. You need proper help. Look at you, it’s killing you.’
Her face was earnest, her concern real. He knew from years of working with her that she was damn good at maintaining the stern facade she had built, and that she rarely gave a glimpse of any vulnerability, so he was touched by the sentiment.
‘I know, and I will, after this is over, I promise. But I can’t right now, not yet. I have to find Billy, she means everything to me, and until I do, it’s pointless even thinking about help.’
‘I’ll hold you to that promise.’
‘I know you will.’ They weren’t idle words, they had a pact. It made him think of that other pact he’d made.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ she asked.
‘That depends a bit on you and the hunt for Billy. I need to do something to help – anything. You know why I have to.’ He looked up at her again. The weight of his exhaustion made it a monumental effort to lift his eyes.
He could see the conflict of emotions on her face, knew damn well the position he was putting her in.
‘Max, I can’t, you know I can’t. You’ve done the right thing by this girl by coming in, and I know how big that was for you. But you have to trust us now – trust me. We have her name and her family, and we’re working our way through all of the car owners. Which reminds me, the pimp who gave you that photo, what’s his name? We’ll need to interview him.’
It hadn’t exactly been a gift, and Max couldn’t imagine the guy being too pleased about a visit from the fuzz.
‘Can’t we play quid pro quo? I give you something, you give me something?’
‘I can give you a night in the cells for obstructing justice. That’s not how it works, and you know it. Do you want to help her or not?’
He sighed. ‘He’s the huge Polynesian guy on K Road with the designer beard and the orange jandals. They call him Tiny, I think. He had a special interest in Billy, wanted to control her, so he probably took quite a bit of notice of her movements. He didn’t mention anything to me about the car or man involved, just gave me the picture. Mind you, he may be more forthcoming for a woman.’
‘I doubt that,’ she said, ‘considering he basically keeps them as slaves.’
‘Can you—?’
‘Max, don’t even ask. Unless you’re suddenly going to become sworn staff again, I can’t give you anything.’
They both knew that wasn’t about to happen.
In his heart he knew he couldn’t expect her to hand-feed him information; and the fact she was so bloody black and white and perfectly untrusting made what he planned next all the more guilt-inducing. He admired her for her dedication to the cause of justice, but sometimes you had to circumvent justice, and this was one of those moments – because the rawness of his self-revelation had made him aware now, more than ever, that he had to find Billy, for her sake and for his.
‘Look, I appreciate all the work you’ve done, looking into this, I really do. It’s just, well, I’m worried sick about this girl – and you can see the parallels for yourself.’
‘I’m doing everything I can.’
‘I know.’ He slowly got to his feet, holding on to the corner of the table to stave off the head-rush after being down low for so long. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Will you be okay?’ The concerned look on her face stirred feelings he hadn’t felt for a long time, but they were all too soon swallowed up by guilt.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Where are you staying? How can I get hold of you if there are any developments?’
That was a damn good question. He knew he’d outstayed his welcome at the boxing gym. He didn’t possess a cellphone, and didn’t have the means to change that.
‘I’ll keep checking in with you here.’ He turned and headed to the door.
‘You didn’t answer the first part of the question.’
He paused and turned back towards her. ‘That’s because I don’t know.’
He could see the tussle going on inside her, the freckles and features certainly no camouflage for a poker face. Was she going to make an offer?
‘I’d better show you out.’
He realised he’d been holding his breath. ‘No need,’ he said. ‘I know full well how to get out of here.’
Bradley
The car ride to the factory had been a white-knuckle journey of reckless distraction. The squeal of brakes and honks of horns drew his attention to the fact he’d run a red light. He’d driven far too fast, narrowly missed a lady pushing a pram at a pedestrian crossing, and as he pulled up outside the building it was only a split-second reconsideration that stopped him from purposefully driving the car into the concrete wall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
The main door into the workshop slammed behind him, the noise echoing around the cavernous building like cannon fire. He strode across the floor, pausing in front of the pile of old tyres only to kick at them, once, twice, God, seven times before the pain in his foot overrode his will and he stopped. God, he just wanted to throw something, anything. He picked a tyre up and hurled it with a roar, but it did nothing to release the anger that burned magnesium white-hot in his guts. And as his eyes roved the building, looking for something, anything with which to quench the fire, that other door beckoned. He looked at it, nostrils flaring, knowing he shouldn’t go in there, not when he was this agitated; but oh, he raged so much, he raged so deep, and before he could stop himself he jammed the key in the lock, turned it viciously and threw the door open with so much force it banged against the wall and ricocheted back so hard that pain fired through the arm he thrust out to block it.
She was cowered there in the corner. The sight of her, hiding, timorous like some mouse, like that pathetic Jenkins, riled him further and he needed to hit something, he wanted to hurt something so badly, and he looked at her, then over at the table, at the whip, and he looked at her, and he had to, he just had to, and then it was in his hand, and he raised it up, and brought it down hard on her back, and he heard her scream and the sound of it, white and pure as it cut through the red haze of his rage was cool bliss, it was climactic, and finally he began to feel that release, the release of all that anger and frustration and hatred, and his soul craved more, and he raised his arm and brought it down again, and again, and again, and he found his voice, each explosive word contrapuntal to the heavenly rhythm of his arm descending again and again,
‘Bitch.
‘Whore.
‘Slut.’
Billy
Her body is a temple to pain, she feels the sear of the stripes across her skin, the scream of her back muscles in their futile attempt to immobilise and protect her from the incessant hurt. She is stunned by disbelief at the ferocity of the attack and in mortal fear of what might happen next. He will kill me. She knows this with absolute certainty; he is gone for now, but he will be back. She has seen the fire in his eyes, burning incandescent with anger and something else; and what terrifies her is the realisation it was the look of lust: he had enjoyed it. Overwhelmed with fear she thinks of her grandmother, her Bubu yalewa, she clings to her solidity and strength and, taking deep breaths, feels her pulse start to slow, her panic ebb. She is not ready to die, even the thought of the word spikes her heart up again, but what can she possibly do from here? She is trapped, bound, powerless. All hope of his mercy flayed with the lash of his whip. But who will save her? When she thinks of her family all she feels is more pain, her abandonment complete. There is only one other, one other hope. She calls on Max. In her mind she paints him as an avenging angel, black-clothed and caped, stealthy, hardened and relentless in his search for her. His X-ray eyes seeing through the concrete of her prison, his arms casting aside doors, smashing through walls, throwing all aside in his mission to reach her. ‘I need you, Max.’
Max
He walked out of the police cafeteria and over towards the exit, his mind still reeling with the force of everything laid bare, but somehow relieved. As he descended the stairwell he could hear the click of her heels as she followed him. He hoped she wouldn’t follow him all the way, and when the click stopped at the next landing and he heard the heavy smoke-stop door pull open, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. With his moment of self-revelation had come conviction. He had to help Billy and he was prepared to do anything, even if it meant deception. He continued down another flight of stairs and then waited a few more moments before entering the next floor. This was where he prayed for luck. It was amazing how you suddenly developed the urge to invoke a higher power when the stakes were truly high. He walked past the door of the first office, his peripheral vision noting the two people in there. It felt like his heart was lodged in his throat, and he made himself keep walking on with the same cadence, like he was meant to be there and not the interloper he was. At the second door he used the same approach and again noted it was occupied. The third was the charm, though, and he slipped in and pulled the door slightly closed after him so he wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else walking past. There were three computers in the office. He moved to the one furthest from the door and clicked the mouse to wake it from its sleep. He hoped the system hadn’t changed at all in the last two years. He doubted it, because that would have involved expenditure and budgets were tight enough, so any changes would be minor. Sure enough, everything was pretty much as he’d remembered it. Alas, the previous user hadn’t been sloppy enough to leave it logged on, which was a bugger; security training must have sunk in. He didn’t sit down, instead he stood, and leaned over the desk and chair, poised to escape, which was a bit ridiculous considering there was only one entrance and if someone came through it he’d be screwed. He typed in his old ID and password, on the off chance it was still valid. The big error message on the screen soon clarified that. He’d known it was never going to work, but he’d felt compelled to try as a delaying tactic from the little piece of deception he was about to pull. He went back to the log-in page and typed in a different ID and password. He paused before hitting enter; his face suddenly felt hot. If it worked, he prayed she would forgive him. His finger hit the key. Oh Jesus, he wasn’t sure if he felt elated or mortified when Meredith’s password failed. It was a little something he’d acquired without her knowledge in those devastating times when Jess had first been kidnapped and he’d been excluded from certain information. He hadn’t needed to use it then because he’d persuaded her to keep him in the loop, but she wasn’t about to make that mistake again. Now he had no choice but to try it. Jesus, think. They’d both been at the security meeting when the hierarchy had had the little password chat, about what was a high-security version, with enough letters and digits, punctuation, upper and lower case to stymie the best guesses of a hacker, and about changing them regularly. They’d also shared a coffee afterwards and unanimously agreed, stuff that, who the hell would remember. He’d told her he worked on a rotation of three passwords involving his kids’ names and the current year with a hash. She’d laughed and called him a lazy swine, and then confessed to using her pets’ names and her street number with a full stop. How many times would the system let him try to log on before it sent an alert somewhere or froze him out altogether? And what the hell were the names of her other cats? He knew the pattern of upper and lower case from the password he’d carefully observed and memorised that time. In a way it was a huge victory that he could still recall it. It was funny what trivia your brain would cling on to while carefully forgetting other, more obvious things. Scotch had been the old cat, the weary battler who had been getting near the end of his days. He was probably dead by now. What were the kittens’ names? The replacements? He smiled when they leapt into his head: Jack and Danielle. Anything was worth a crack, and he was fast running out of time and options. With every second that passed he expected someone to come walking through that door.
