Faceless, page 6
Billy
She takes stock of her surroundings. Although the darkness is complete, she senses the dimensions of her prison. Her skin feels the chill, thick mass of cold concrete, the hairs on her arms erect, pulled to attention by the army of microscopic muscles supporting them. She shivers at the weight of those prison walls. In the death-like stillness of the room she detects the minute air movements reflecting off the smooth surfaces. They tell her the ceiling is not far overhead, the far wall is four metres away with a small table in front of it; the only other object occupying the space is her. It is as if the hair on her head is amplifying each echo, each echo of her breath, transmitting the tiny vibrations down each tightly spiralled strand, through her scalp and skull, to reverberate within her brain. Although her mind has memorised the space – a photographic image captured in that brief flood of light that came with him – it is what she senses that provides the realism. It is what she senses that she trusts. She feels the room.
Bradley
He turned off the street beyond the forlorn remainder of the landscaped verge, now more weeds and thistles than flax and toitoi, and drove down the narrow side ingress to the rear of his building, the vibration of tyres over loose gravel trembling its way up his spine. There were no observers around to note his arrival; the whole area was pretty much deserted, with the nearest scattering of parked cars at least a block away. They belonged to a small engineering firm that didn’t need street appeal to catch potential clients. The low rent was probably the only reason they were still here and hadn’t abandoned the area for newer industrial parks like everyone else. Mind you, with the recession he was sure a number of those businesses wished they hadn’t been so hasty; if anything, he fervently hoped the economic climate would make sites like his – large and cheap – appealing to those struggling with their bottom line. The building had become a millstone around his neck in so many ways.
The only other business in the near vicinity, other than the engineers, was a long-term storage place. No one staffed it: high chainlink fences, razor wire, alarms and surveillance cameras were security enough. If you wanted human contact you had to ring the telephone number, painted in turquoise, six-foot-high numerals across the wall. There were no locals to see him and cars seldom drove past; but still, he wasn’t about to take another risk.
The memory of his trip to Avondale made him cringe. How could he have been so stupid? To panic like some skittish colt was unforgivable. A guilty-looking, suit-clad businessman running out of a store like that was far more likely to attract attention and etch him into someone’s memory than if he’d just sucked it in, made his purchases and left. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And now here he was hiding in his car with a pile of cash, a failed plan and nothing else.
He leaned forward, head on the steering wheel, berating himself for his own stupidity. He knew he should go in, check how she was. Check if she was even there. She might have escaped for all he knew. Part of him wished she had. He fantasised for a moment that she’d got out of there, become disorientated and couldn’t remember a thing about where she’d been imprisoned, and that she couldn’t describe the dumb prick who had kidnapped her. The bile-flavoured churn of panic re-emerged at that thought. It was the one sure thing that wouldn’t happen.
What the fuck was he going to do now? He couldn’t leave her in the room, that was for certain. He owned the bloody building. If anyone discovered her there, he’d be the first person they’d come a-visiting. And if there was one thing he’d discovered in the last twenty-four hours it was that he couldn’t cope with that kind of pressure: he wasn’t cut out to be a criminal, and his conscience was eating him alive. The police would take one look at his guilty face and frog-march him down to the station, quick smart. He’d crumble under the tiniest bit of scrutiny.
He had to come up with a solution, and fast. The longer this stretched out, the less chance there was of anything ever getting back to normal, and at the moment, normality was the one thing he craved. Never again would he moan about his lot. So what if his job was giving him high blood pressure and an ulcer? Who cared that his wife wore the pants and didn’t appreciate his needs? Hell, he’d gratefully bend to her every whim and demand, if only this would all just go away. He was desperate to get back on his personal treadmill of tedium.
‘Come on, Fordyce.’ There had to be something he could do, something that would salvage the situation. He tossed a few ideas around in his head. He could stick the girl in the car, hidden in the boot, like he had when he brought her here, drive her out somewhere in the Waitakere Ranges, dump her in the bush to find her own way back. But what if she got lost, or fell and hurt herself? He didn’t want to have any chance of being responsible for her death; his soul was wrestling enough now. That knowledge would surely tear him apart. He could gag her and dump her in a park under cover of darkness, somewhere where the early-morning dog walkers would be sure to find her, get her help. But then she would still remember him, describe him; they would make one of those identikit pictures, splash it all over the news and he would spend the rest of his life waiting for a knock on the door.
The bag of money on the floor of the car drew his eye. Buying silence still seemed the best solution, or at least the one with the best odds of working. Twenty grand was a hell of a lot of money for a teenager. It could buy a shitload of clothes or jewellery or smartphones, or whatever it was teenagers bought nowadays. His mind jumped to the reason he had picked her up in the first place, that fateful drive down K Road, and he felt a jolt of hope. Twenty grand could get her off the streets. Somehow that thought made him feel a tiny bit better. It could change her life; she could escape from prostitution and set herself up with anything she wanted – study, travel, anything. Of course he could threaten her with all sorts of things he’d inflict on her if she ever dared to break his trust, but surely she wouldn’t betray him with such an opportunity in her hands.
What about his own future? There was no reason he had to stay in Auckland. Ange’s parents lived in Wellington – he was sure she’d jump at the chance to move closer if he played the proposal right. And surely he could get work down there – it was the country’s capital, for heaven’s sake. There were always public-servant jobs coming up. New start, new city, great opportunity for the grandparents to support Ange and the kids, better lifestyle. It could work.
A smile threatened to break out on his face for the first time in days. He could pull it off. But there was only one way to do this: he was going to have to harden up and get back out there, buy the clothes, get the girl cleaned up, give her the money, pay her way out of his life. It was the only way.
The growl of the engine as he turned the key in the ignition strengthened his resolve. Holding on to the chance of redemption, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards the city.
Billy
She feels the faint vibration travelling through the concrete floor and whispering up her legs, and when she turns her head, straining to listen, she can just make out the muffled sound of a car. It’s him, he’s coming back. She shrinks against the wall, her heart racing as she feels the swell of panic rising, hears the ever-louder ringing in her ears threatening to overwhelm her senses … No, she can’t do this, she has to stay with it. She blows her breath through her lips, determines to clamp the terror down, to control it. She has to stay alert, she has to quell her fear, because losing herself to the horror serves no one, losing herself achieves nothing. Again she calls on the physical to draw herself into the moment. She rubs her head against the wall, and the sharp bite of pain pulls her mind into focus. She listens, she waits, in the darkness that envelops her, but doesn’t swallow her.
Then a minute tremor moves up through the base of her spine, followed by the faint rumbling sound, and she realises he is leaving. Relief floods through her. Her tensed-up muscles relax their cramp-like grip, she flops against the wall. But relief is followed by alarm as her mind leaps through the possibilities. What if it wasn’t him? What if it was someone else, someone who could have found her, freed her? The ache of thirst in her throat becomes all-encompassing; the fetid stench and cold, clammy discomfort of urine- and crap-soaked trousers becomes overwhelming, intolerable.
She calls out.
The sound is a hoarse crackle, accompanied by the iron tang of blood in her mouth. ‘Don’t leave me here. Come back.’ Her eyes are too dry to shed the tears. ‘Come back.’
Max
The last retreating strands of afternoon sunlight had disappeared between the concrete and glass valleys of downtown Auckland, replaced by the glow of the streetlamps and the brilliance of the Sky Tower bathed in its cloak of light. His joints ached, more from the seeping chill of evening than from his self-imposed stillness. He cursed himself inwardly for his cowardice, his inability to step across the six-lane boundary and enter that world, not even for her. In penance for his shortcomings he had not sought food, nor water, and now thirst and the growl of hunger fought for his attention. He knew he couldn’t stay here. He’d failed. He’d failed her, he’d failed himself. The trouble was, failure was nothing new, so although it rankled, the guilt of it was still not enough to force him to act. Well, not here anyway. The first of the society ladies would be appearing for their nightly business on K Road, where she used to ply her trade when the occasion demanded. He’d go up there, ask a few questions, find out what they had seen, if anything. That he could handle, talking to creatures of the night, creatures not too unlike himself. Unlike the monstrosity before him. Today, dealing with that building and what lay within had proven too much. A frown rippled up his forehead as his eyes tracked the progress of the uniform crossing the road. He’d noticed the constable when he’d first come out of the station doors, but now, as he moved towards the traffic lights and waited to cross, instinct told Max the visit was for his benefit. He rose to his feet, wincing at the sharp pain that ripped through his hip, and waited.
The constable was young, early twenties he would have guessed, but well muscled and clearly not apprehensive about the task at hand as he walked straight up to Max, not stopping until he was a metre or so away. Max felt himself being sized up; he noted the unconscious twitching of the young man’s nose and the more conscious frown on the constable’s face. He kept a respectable distance.
‘You’ve been sitting there all day. Time you moved on, mate.’
He was in a small way gratified that someone had taken notice of him. Most of the time he felt invisible, just one of the faceless, nameless lost minions of this city that the everyday people automatically filtered out of their consciousness. But then you’d like to think the police would notice someone staring at their building for way too long.
‘Yeah. Ah. Sorry.’ He stood still, wrestling with indecision.
The constable’s eyes narrowed, like he had been expecting some movement instead of, or as well as, a half-hearted apology.
‘Is there going to be a problem?’ His stance had subtly shifted to make it clear that if there was going to be any problem, it was going to belong to Max.
‘I, ah…’ He looked once more across at the forbidding building and tried to conjure up the image of Billy in his mind – small, vulnerable Billy, Billy who needed him to find her, Billy who needed him to just open his mouth and say the words.
‘I need to report a missing person.’
There, he’d said it, and he felt a surge of lightness at having taken that first step.
‘A missing person?’ Again he could feel the young man’s appraisal. ‘Who?’
‘A girl, young woman.’ He paused, piecing together in his mind how he would describe her.
‘Is this young woman,’ the constable slowed, finding the right word, ‘an associate of yours?’
Max knew what he was asking, and he knew how seriously this case would be taken depended very much on what he now said.
‘She has been living near me, but she has not returned to her home for two nights. She always returns home or, if she isn’t going to, she informs me of where she will be. She is very reliable, so it’s unusual for her not to come home, or to let someone know. I’m concerned about her.’ He made sure his words were as clear and concise as possible, and he maintained eye contact with the young man throughout, which was a hell of a struggle – he hadn’t done that with anyone in a very long time.
‘What is her name?’ He could see from the attentiveness of the constable that he was being properly listened to, and he was surprised to feel he could have cried with relief.
‘Her name is Billy. She’s Fijian, eighteen years old, although she looks younger than that – she looks more like a sixteen-year-old. Her English is excellent, although she speaks with a slight accent.’ The constable had taken out a notebook and was jotting details down, so Max continued with a description. ‘She is five foot two, or about 158 centimetres tall, would weigh about fifty-five kilograms. She has brown eyes, with a small crescent-shaped scar above her left eyebrow, dark-brown hair in long tight curls, usually pulled back in a ponytail. And last time I saw her she was wearing blue jeans, an olive-green hoodie, and she had red-checked Skecher-style shoes on. She also wears a very distinctive greenstone necklace in the shape of a whale fluke with a white plaited cord and a bone fastener.’
The constable stopped writing and was looking at him with a curious and somewhat surprised expression. ‘What is her full name?’
This is where it all fell short for him. She’d never told him her full name. People who came to live in alleyways often did this, because they wanted to remain anonymous. They came to live a different life, either out of choice or necessity, though more often the latter. If they didn’t tell, you didn’t ask. He’d sure as hell never told anyone his name other than Max.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his eyes dropping away. ‘I don’t know her full name. I only know her as Billy.’
‘What is her address? Have her parents or family been concerned she is missing?’
What the hell did he tell him now? He had to tread very carefully.
‘She didn’t live with her family. They were estranged, so she didn’t talk about them much, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you their names.’ He hesitated before giving their address. ‘She lives in Lorne Street.’
‘What number?’
‘No number.’
The constable looked at him again, and he knew that look – it was the ‘you had me hopeful for a minute there, but…’ look. There was always going to be a but.
‘Look, people who live rough often disappear for a few days. They pop up somewhere else. I know you said this young woman was reliable, but maybe she’s gone off to visit someone and forgot to tell you.’ He flipped his notebook closed and slid the pen’s clip over the end. ‘There’s nothing here we can go on. You’ve given a very thorough description, but without her full name we don’t have a place to start checking.’
‘You could check the hospitals, or,’ his throat caught at the thought, ‘the morgue.’
The constable’s eyes softened. ‘Look, I can see you’re concerned, and thank you for reporting this, but there’s nothing we can do right now. Half the people reported missing turn up within two days, and almost everyone does within a couple of weeks. You can report someone straight away, but with so little information we’re not really going to be able to do anything, especially with someone who is homeless.’
‘So you won’t do anything?’ That feeling of helplessness had returned; the hunger gnawing at his stomach was replaced by a cold, hard fear.
‘I can check the hospitals…’ Thankfully he didn’t add the second part to that train of thought. ‘But after such a short period of time and without a name or any other details we can’t do much.’ He pulled the notebook out again. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, pen poised.
