A Simple Act of Violence (23 page)

‘Take a look,’ he said, and he smiled, shook his head, sort of half-frowned and then watched Roth’s expression change as he read the first entry on the search page.

‘Cordillera Isabella,’ Roth said. ‘Predominant land mass and mountain range extending approximately three hundred and sixty kilometers from Chinandega on the western coastline to the Honduran border at Montañas de Colon, Cordillera Isabella rivals Costa Rica’s Cordillera de Talamanca as one of the most extensive mountain ranges on the South American peninsula . . . et cetera et cetera . . .’ Roth looked at Miller and shook his head. ‘A newspaper clipping about the election and now this?’

‘Think someone is trying to tell us—’ Miller began, but was cut short by the telephone ringing on his desk.

 

Eyes. Eyes dark enough to be barely visible.

That’s the first thing she saw, perhaps the only thing she saw, because there was something about the way he looked at her that made her cold and awkward and silent. The way he looked right through her that made her feel as if she was really nothing at all.

She started to breathe, and then he shook his head and raised his finger to his lips, and there was something about the way he looked that told her she should say and do nothing, that something was going on here that was an awful lot bigger than her, and if she challenged it it might just swallow her whole, so the best thing to do was just to stand there silently, and breathe as shallowly as possible, and wait and see what the man had to say for himself.

And what he said was, ‘Natasha.’

And when he said her name she sort of unravelled inside and felt weak at the knees, and she had to put her hand out behind her to find the edge of the counter-top, to balance herself, to steady herself, to give herself some kind of support and ensure that she didn’t faint right then and there . . .

‘Natasha Joyce,’ the man said matter-of-factly.

And Natasha - despite her best judgement, despite some inner voice screaming at her that this was something she wanted no part of - nodded, and then kind of half-smiled awkwardly, and she said, ‘Yes . . . I’m Natasha . . .’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s very good.’

And then he took a single step forward, and even though she wanted to ask him who he was and what he was doing, why he was in her apartment, and before that how he’d gotten into her apartment in the first place, it didn’t matter, didn’t matter at all, because she kind of knew in her gut that whatever he said would be pretty much the last thing she heard, pretty much the last thing that happened in her life, because that single step he took, just a simple matter of eight or ten inches, possessed such a sense of finality, and there was nothing in the world that had ever felt like that . . . even when she was screaming blue murder through labor pains, even when they sent down a woman police officer to tell her that Darryl King was dead from a gunshot to the chest . . . even then . . . even then . . .

Sound of something escaped her lips, and she felt the weight of her own body resisting gravity, but gravity was like heavy water, and the tension that usually supported her, tension she never gave a second thought to, seemed to ease out from beneath her, and though she gripped the edge of the counter-top as hard as she could, though she held on for dear life . . . though she closed her eyes and said some kind of prayer to a God she had long since stopped believing in, she knew that all of it didn’t matter any more . . .

She felt her knees like elastic, like something pliable, something with plenty of give . . .

And they gave.

Gave right under her.

And the man with greying hair and dark eyes was there to catch her, and she knew that these would be the last hands she ever felt, that his expression - something understanding, patient, almost sympathetic, almost compassionate - would be the very last way that anyone ever looked at her . . .

Thought of Chloe down the hall.

Thought of the very last thing she’d ever said to the father of her only child . . . a child that would now be raised an orphan, a child that would skip down the hallway in less than an hour from this moment, skip down the hall from Esme’s place, and knock on the door, and finding it locked would go right back to Esme, and Esme would come herself, and she would feel that strange intuition that tells you that something’s wrong, and you don’t know what, couldn’t possibly imagine . . . But something about the human mind, about the very way we are, tells you automatically, without even thinking for a second, that whatever has happened is bad . . .

That kind of something.

And Esme would turn the handle and feel it resist her, and she’d beat on the door with her frail fist, and getting nothing at all, not a single solitary sound, she would back up, turn to her left, and go down the hall to Mr and Mrs Ducatto’s place. And Mr Ducatto, overweight, Italian, a good guy in his heart but a mouth like a railway tunnel, loud and dirty, would smile with some sense of understanding, trying his damnedest to be patient for the sake of the little black girl Esme had in tow, and he would go back with them and try the door, and suggest they call the supervisor, and Esme would tell him that the supervisor was out for a little while and he would just have to open the door himself, and yes, she would take complete responsibility for any damage that might be done to the door, and that he should charge right at it because there was something wrong, something awful wrong . . .

Broke the door in he did.

Bust that son-of-a-bitch door wide open with his broad shoulder, and it fell inward as the jamb snapped like kindling. Told the old woman and the kid to stay right where they were, and he went in there, and he checked the place out, and he figured he’d come right back and tell them that everything was fine, that Natasha Joyce had fallen asleep . . .

But she wasn’t sleeping.

She was in bed alright, no question about it, or not so much in bed as on top of the bed, and she was on her back, her arms wide, her head to one side as if waiting for her lover; as if she’d been expecting someone to come right on through that bedroom door and find her . . .

Natasha Joyce was strangled and beaten and covered in bruises, and there were burst blood vessels in her eyes that made her look like something out of some L.A. straight-to-video sex-killer slasher movie, and the way her shoulder was twisted made it seem as if her arm had been wrenched out of its socket, which it had, and when Marilyn Hemmings snapped on her latex gloves at approximately two-fifteen, afternoon of Wednesday the 15th of November - realizing then that it had only been four days since she’d delved into the corpse of Catherine Sheridan - there was a certain sense of finality to the way in which Natasha Joyce had been beaten and strangled.

‘It is what it is,’ she would tell Robert Miller.

But that was Wednesday.

That was later.

In the moment that Natasha Joyce felt everything inside her give way, as she felt the weight of her entire body making its way slowly to the floor of the kitchen, there was really only one thought she had, one simple question - the answer to which would now evade her for ever -
What happened to Darryl?

And the presence of that question was such that she even voiced it - her words faint, almost unintelligible, as the man with the greying hair and the soft-soled sneakers reached down and pressed the balls of his thumbs into the sockets of her eyes.

‘Wha-what happened . . . what happened to Da-Darryl?’

The man didn’t answer her. He did not hear her clearly. But had he heard, he would not have been able to help her. He did not know the answer. More importantly, the manner in which he’d been taught precluded any possibility of pausing to deal with anything the subject said.

That would have been a violation of protocol.

As straightforward and simple as that.

The pain and pressure in her eyes caused her to black out. And then he lifted her gently, almost as one would lift a child, and he carried her through to the small bedroom where her only child had been conceived.

And he laid her on the bed.

He steepled his fingers and popped his joints.

He got to work.

 

 

 

 

 

I shook my head. ‘You’re busy,’ I said. ‘You’re going somewhere,
meeting someone . . .’