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?’
He nodded. She made him lie across the sofa. ‘Stay where you are or I spray you.’
With his hands cuffed behind his back she didn’t expect trouble, but still she kept her eyes fixed on him as she edged backwards to the entrance of the apartment.
‘Did you touch this?’ she said, for the first time noticing the smudged patches on the glass ornament’s surface and the daubing of black fingerprints on the glossy white paintwork of the shelf.
He lifted his head from the armrest of the sofa, not answering. No longer empty, his pale eyes gleamed with hatred.
She kept him in sight as she phoned Central for a paddy wagon, trying to keep her excuses straight in her head for the inevitable questions about her presence in Michelle’s flat.
But before anyone arrived, she had to check the safe.
She took the ornament from the alcove and placed it on the floor behind her. Turning back to the shelf she slid it aside to reach the slender metal box. She repeated the combination to herself as she balanced the box across the wall cavity and twirled the dial. The lid snapped open. She saw immediately that it was full to the brim with documents and photographs. With her heart pounding, she lowered her hand and pulled out a fistful.
A gasp from her prisoner made her look up.
She saw his expression of shocked surprise turn to one of cold terror.
***
She must have died and gone to hell. Why else would she be lying in Tye’s arms, looking up at him? No, wait, that wasn’t Tye; it was Wayne.
Shit, she really was in hell.
The light pierced her slitted eyes, setting her head on fire. There was activity all around her, she heard the clack of equipment, voices, puffs and gasps. She scowled at Wayne, but could tell from his look of concern that it had come out as a grimace.
‘She’s waking up.’ Wayne stated the obvious to one of the lurking, shadowy figures at the edge of her vision.
Angus came into focus and bent down by her side.
‘What the hell,’ was all she could manage as she tried to shake herself out of Wayne’s hold and pull herself up through the gauzy levels of consciousness.
‘Hold still, Stevie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a nasty gash on the back of your head.’
Her hand crept to her head and came away sticky with blood.
And then a thought hit her with almost as much force as the blow that had knocked her out. In a panic she twisted herself around to look in the direction of the sofa where most of the noise and activity was coming from. She saw an ambulance crew, a gurney, oxygen canisters and various other pieces of lifesaving equipment.