26
The man stopped outside the house and knocked a couple of times. We waited. Ten seconds later, a silhouette moved along the hallway, distorted in the mottled glass panel. I took a subtle step away from the door as the silhouette leaned in towards the peephole. Then the lock flipped and the door came away from the frame.
Adrian Wellis filled the gap.
He was dressed in his boxer shorts. Nothing else. I could see the crucifix tattoo at his neck, and more on his body: a snake’s head on his left breast; the numbers 666 on his hip. ‘What the hell are you doing back?’ he said to the man, and then, as he took a step closer, spotted me off to the side. His eyes flicked between the man and me, and he pulled the door back as far as it would go. He had a faintly amused expression on his face. ‘What the f*ck is this?’ he said. He was Welsh.
‘He stopped me on the street and I –’
‘Shut up,’ ordered Wellis. He turned to me. ‘Who are you?’
‘I want to talk to you about Sam Wren.’
Something registered in his eyes, like a flash of torchlight cutting through the dark. On. Then off. ‘Who?’
I didn’t bother repeating myself.
His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ben Richards.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘I don’t work for anyone.’
He frowned for a moment, then broke out into a smile. Perfect teeth. Expensive, just like his clothes. He pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, Ben.’
‘I think you do.’
Beyond him the decor was probably the same as the day the house was built. Most of the wallpaper had either fallen from the walls or been torn off. The carpet was threadbare, from the front door to the kitchen at the back of the house. Three or four holes had been punched into the staircase and walls, about the size of a boot, and there were stains everywhere: on the walls, on the carpet, on the stairs. The house was filthy.
I looked back at Wellis. ‘So?’
He studied me a while longer, then looked at the man standing next to me. There was a mix of disgust and pity in his face. ‘You want me to invite you in, is that it?’
‘Not necessarily. We can chat here.’
‘I don’t do my chatting on the doorstep.’
‘Then it looks like I’m coming in.’
He snorted. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.
‘Or I can head back to the car, dial 999 and tell them you know where Sam Wren is. It’s up to you, Adrian.’
He stared at me, then stepped back and let the man through.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Your friend stays outside.’
‘You dictating the terms now, is that it?’
‘It’s simple maths. Two of you, one of me.’
The thin man stood there in the hallway, waiting for Wellis to tell me where to go – but Wellis ordered him to wait outside, and his face took on the look of a disappointed teenager. He dropped the holdall to the floor – making a clattering sound; metal against metal – and did as Wellis said. I stepped inside the house and pushed the door shut.
The house stank of sweat and fried food. In the living room the TV was on, but the screen was blue, as if a DVD had just been turned off. I shifted around, my back to the wall, so I had Wellis in front of me.
‘What do you want?’ he said, running his tongue around his mouth.
He didn’t seem conscious of the fact he was semi-naked. Or if he did, it genuinely didn’t seem to bother him. His body was squat; not fat, but hard and chunky, muscle in his chest, through the centre of his stomach and up into his arms. He rolled his shoulders back and then brought his hands together in front of him.
‘I want to know what happened to Sam Wren.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who he is.’
‘Do I?’
‘You’re in his phone.’
He shrugged, didn’t seem worried. ‘I’m in a lot of people’s phones.’
‘You called him in August last year.’
‘And?’
‘And you put him on edge.’
Wellis smirked. ‘And?’
‘And I want to know why.’
‘What the f*ck’s it got to do with you?’
‘I guess we’ll see.’
‘Yeah?’
I nodded.
Wellis shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Let me just remind you of something, dickhead. You’re in my home.’
‘I can see that.’
‘So, what, you’re RoboCop – is that it?’
‘I’m not a cop.’
‘Then who the f*ck are you?’
‘I want to find out what happened to Sam Wren. So I can either get the answers from you, or I get them from Lassie out there, but I’m going to get them.’
He took a step towards me, ready to attack.
Then, from above us, there was a noise. A bump. Like a big, dead weight being dropped. Wellis shot a look upstairs. I followed suit.
‘What was tha–’
But before I could finish he was on me.
He came forward, his arm across the front of his face, using it as a battering ram. He went through me, almost lifting me off my feet, and slammed me against the wall.
‘Eric!’ he shouted and the front door burst open.
The other man headed past us and upstairs, taking two steps at a time, as if he knew exactly what he was being summoned for. Wellis shoved harder with his forearm, pressing it in against my neck, forcing my body against the wall and my head up. I tried to swing a punch, but he blocked it and arced a fist up into my guts.
It was like being hit by a train.
I shifted my weight left to right and the movement rocked him back on his heels. Only a fraction. But enough. I drove a fist into the side of his head and managed to connect with his ear. He stumbled back half a step and I jabbed a second punch – as hard as it would go – into the centre of his throat. He made a sound like air escaping from a balloon, shrinking in on himself.
But Wellis was a fighter.
He channelled everything he had into a swing, connecting with the area around my heart. It was like he’d punched through me. I hit the wall so hard and so fast the whole house seemed to shake. The door rattled in its frame. The plasterboard rippled. As I was catching my breath, he moved quickly to the holdall, unzipping it.
A second later, he had a knife.
His fingers were laced through three holes in the rubberized grip. The blade was curved, about three and a half inches long. I stepped away from him and saw, inside the holdall, more knives, some rope, handcuffs – and a white vest and jeans, both belonging to a female, dotted with blood.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he said, breathless. I didn’t respond. ‘Now I’m gonna have to take care of you.’
Upstairs, I could hear the other man moving around.
Quick footsteps.
Wellis edged towards me, knife out in front of him. He was forcing me back towards the kitchen, into a space where there was no exit.
‘Ade!’ the other man screamed from upstairs.
Wellis glanced behind him. An automatic reaction.
And I made my move.
From behind me I yanked out the crowbar I’d taken from the car. It was short, stubby, no more than a foot and a half long – but when it connected with the side of his head, Wellis went down like he’d been shot. His eyes rolled back; every muscle in his body turned to liquid. Then he was flat on his back on the carpet, lights out.
I turned him over on to his front.
‘Ade!’ the man shouted again from upstairs. ‘Quickly!’
Grabbing his arms, I dragged Wellis through to the kitchen and then went through the cabinets. In between a bottle of bleach and a tube of rat poison, I found a roll of duct tape. I bound Wellis’s ankles and wrists and looped the tape around his head a few times, covering his mouth. By the time I was done, he was slowly starting to come round. Eyes flickering like butterfly wings; eyeballs rolling up into his head, as if trying to tune himself back in. I had about five minutes before he returned to something like full strength.
Moving back through the hallway, I padded up the stairs. No creaks. No sound. At the top, in one of the rooms, I could see a loft hatch was open. A ladder had been pulled down and propped against the carpet. The man was halfway up, body inside the loft, legs still on the steps. As I edged in closer, I spotted something else.
Right on the edge of the loft space.
Blood.
I moved quietly into the room and stopped at the bottom of the ladder; more blood was falling from the lip of the hatch. It hit a space about half a foot from where I was standing, forming a pool on the hard, matted fibres of the carpet. The man was just standing there, looking off into the darkness at whatever was up there. Not moving now. Just breathing in and out.
‘Ade,’ he said again, but this time there was no purpose in his words, no urgency, and I realized something: he was crying. Soft sounds. Sniffs. ‘Ade,’ he said again.
I reached up, hands either side of his ankles.
‘Ade!’
He looked down, and saw me. Shock in his face. Then fear. Then anger. I grabbed his ankles and pulled him off the ladder. He fell hard and fast, cracking his head against one of the steps, before landing awkwardly right on the ball of his foot. He yelled out and collapsed. I grabbed him by the collar, got him to his feet and drove him back, into the wall. The wind whistled out of him.
‘What’s your name?’
Tears and blood on his face.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Eric.’
‘Eric what?’
‘Eric Gaishe.’
I glanced up, into the loft space. ‘What have you done, Eric?’
He sniffed. More tears in his eyes.
‘I think I killed someone.’