Captured (15 page)

Paul reached for his gun with his left hand and pushed the door. A second later, Neil felt his stomach lurch. Aaron and Paul had moved inside in opposite directions, and were shaking their heads.

What?

Neil opened his mouth to speak but stopped abruptly as Aaron held a finger to his mouth. Paul pointed at three doors on the other side of the room. He closed the door softly before he and Aaron walked forward to the doors. They gripped a handle each, guns poised. Aaron nodded. They threw the doors open together and burst inside.

“What the fuck?”

Neil moved from the middle of the room to look over Aaron’s shoulder.

“What you got? Other room’s empty,” Paul said, joining them.

The room was a similar grey shade to the rest of the apartment. It was bare, apart from a set of built-in wardrobes and a bare bed.

Aaron looked at Paul with raised eyebrows.

“Nothing,” Aaron confirmed.

“No,” Neil mouthed. His heart rate slowly returned to normal and brought lucidity along with it. “Where the hell is Grace? And Kirsty?”

The other men shrugged in unison.

“Nothing,” Paul recounted into his phone. He ended the call. “They’re on the way up.”

Neil sat down on one of the couches, exhausted. He had been prepared for action, but not for this. The other two men paced the room, frustrated for different reasons.

They started when the door opened. It was Mike and Simon.

“Don’t worry buddy.” Mike walked to where Neil had slumped, and patted his shoulder. “We’ll find her.” he walked back past the door towards the bedrooms. “Whoa, it sure smells like there’s someone here.”

Simon, visibly shaken, followed him. He hesitated at the door doorway. “Maybe he moved.”

Paul turned to face them from beside the window. “You think?”

Mike glared at him. “Not really a good time, Paul.”

“I don’t get it, I thought you were sure.” Simon turned to Neil. “Where is she? If she’s not here, where is she?”

Neil shrugged. “I know as much as you. I suppose he panicked when Grace arrived.” he looked around at all of them. “We may as well search the place while we’re waiting. Maybe he left something behind.”

They each took a room, leaving Simon sitting on the couch, bent double with worry. “It’s all my fault,” he muttered to Neil, who was opening doors and drawers in the kitchen. He walked to the window, suddenly needing air. He looked back at the sharp intake of breath. “Neil? What is it?”

“I’ve found something!” Neil stood in front of the fridge, leaning against the wide-open door. One-by-one the others collected around him in the small kitchen. They stared open-mouthed.

Crammed inside the fridge was a tall white man. He was curled up in the foetal position. Neil reached his hand in and felt around for a pulse, redundantly: it was clear from the bluish hue of his skin that he had been dead for some time.

“Is that our guy?” Paul asked from over Neil’s shoulder.

“Let me look,” Simon pushed in from the back. The man’s face was part-obscured by his shoulder and arm.

Paul placed a hand on Simon’s shoulder. “Let’s get him out of there so you can see him properly.”

“What about the police?” Simon countered.

“Bit late for the police,” Aaron chuckled.

Simon glared at him. “You think this is funny?”

Aaron shook his head. “Sorry, man. But it’s true.” He reached back to the counter and grabbed a cloth. Swaddling his hand with it, he knelt down and tried to move the dead man’s arm aside.

“It’s not him,” Simon shook his head.

“Then who is he?” Neil asked, confused.

“Maybe it’s the guy you told us about,” Mike said, scratching his face. “The boyfriend.”

Simon shuddered, before looking again. “No, he’s blonde. And tanned.”

Aaron snorted. “It’s amazing what death and a fridge can do for your tan.”

Mike tutted, hiding a smirk. “Did you guys find anything in the bedrooms?”

Paul shrugged. “Absolutely nothing. No bed sheets, no towels. I would have said the place hadn’t been lived in if I hadn’t thrown off the mattresses: the bottoms were stained with,” he looked at Simon and paused. “They were stained.”

“I’ll check the other one, it just looked unused to me,” Aaron said, walking towards the second bedroom.

Neil shook his head. “There was nothing in the kitchen at all, apart from the dishes and stuff that must have come with the place. Then I find a body in the fridge. Why leave the body?”

“This mattress is the same,” Aaron called.

Mike shook his head, looking at Neil. “A dead body’s harder to transport, for one. Plus, you saw how difficult it was to try and move his arm. Good luck getting that out of the refrigerator.”

“Does that mean he was killed here,” Neil asked.

Paul nodded. “I’d bet on it. Whoever killed him could have bundled him up like that and then put him inside, but then it wouldn’t be so hard to get him out. I’d bet he was killed here and stuffed in before rigor had a chance to set in.”

“Who is this guy? And why leave him here? Does that mean there’s a good chance Grace is alright?”

Paul shrugged. “You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking about it. But I know something: our body here is unlikely to show us anything useful, otherwise your friend wouldn’t have left him here for us to find.”

“He knew we’d find him?” Neil asked.

“Yeah. Look around. The place is scrubbed clean but there’s a body in the fridge. He didn’t care else he wouldn’t have left it.”

Mike clapped his hands. “Let’s go back to the apartment. We don’t want to be here if the police turn up.”

“What’ll we do with him?” Neil pointed towards the open fridge.

They all followed his gaze. “There’s nothing we can do. We’ll call the police anonymously,” Mike finally conceded.

Neil nodded, and moved to leave but stopped suddenly. Taking out his phone, he tapped at the screen before pointing at the fridge. The phone made a synthesised clicking noise.

He hesitated at the open door a moment before reaching up and closing it to the pervasive humidity.

The laptop buzzed. The motion detector on 305’s door had just been set off. 

On the monitor, Daniel saw that the three men had congregated around the door to the bedroom directly above Grace’s. Outside, the others were still huddled in the car, watching the entrance.

Satisfied that he’d covered everything, he checked all of the cameras. There were five of them now, Simon and another man having joined them later. Even on the grainy picture he could make out Simon’s expression: he was satisfied to see that his old friend looked utterly anguished.

He was intrigued by one of the other men’s reactions: the others seemed concerned, but this one was different. It was the one who was dressed differently to his colleagues. Who was he?

Now they were fanning out to search the rooms. He held his breath again; sure that he hadn’t left anything incriminating behind but spellbound by the suspense. What if they recognised Grant from the pictures? Daniel had dyed his hair, sure, but he himself had recognised him immediately in the internet cafe that day. Daniel knew that Simon too had been checking Kirsty’s Facebook compulsively: he was bound to have had a similar reaction. Would he admit it? He frowned. Simon was unlikely to go to the police, but the others?

Shit.

He had expected them to linger for longer. Now they were leaving? He didn’t have much time.

Grace’s unexpected arrival had ruined Daniel’s relaxed routine, and he looked at her resentfully now as he plunged the contents of the syringe into her arm. He had noticed the welts on her ankles as soon as he removed the ropes earlier that morning. He guessed that she’d done it on purpose, and sorely wished that he could just kill her there and then as planned, but now he’d have to bring her too. Even then he’d have to wait until those godforsaken wounds cleared up, or no one would ever believe it was a suicide.

When he’d finished, he returned to Kirsty’s room, checked her pulse and looked at her closely before untying the ropes. He reached to his back pocket and pulled out the knife, drawing it though the coiled ropes with a flourish. It swam along as if it was slicing through butter, not reinforced nylon. He replaced the knife carefully and opened the doors to one of the wardrobes.

The enormous rucksack had been an inspired idea, he knew, courtesy of all those shabby backpackers he saw walking around the city. He had been surprised to find one so big. He opened the bag to its full capacity and picked Kirsty up from the bed, placing her gently inside. Her positioning reminded him of that of her boyfriend in the fridge: her legs were bent at the knee, pushing against the front of the bag, with the dead weight of her arms on top. He closed the drawstring fastening and stood back, surprised. There had been no real need to even cut a hole in the top flap of the bag like he had done.

He gathered up the severed rope and bundled it in to a bin liner he’d brought from the kitchen. He did the same with the fitted sheet from the bed. He tore the pillow covers from the pillows and added them, moving Kirsty’s head to bundle them behind her. He gave the room a final check and dragged the bag outside, with the pillows under his arm. He shoved these into the bin liner. They were still warm, despite the removal of their coverings. Next, he returned to the bedroom with a bottle of bleach from the kitchen and upended it, drenching the mattress with its contents. After allowing it a few moments to soak in, he manoeuvred the mattress so that it stood perpendicular to the bed base, steadying it with his hands as he shifted to the other side of the bed to let it down softly. When he had rearranged it neatly on the base, so neither side protruded noticeably, he doused the other side with bleach and made a final check of the room before leaving and closing the door.

He closed the laptop, stuffed it in a daypack and made one final sweep of the apartment, cramming syringes and bottles into the rucksack, and throwing towels into the bin liner.

When he had finished, he walked into Grace’s room, and followed the same routine, except that he loaded her into a large hard-sided suitcase he’d paid a premium for that morning, when he had seen her ankles and panicked.

Hurry up
, he chided himself. He had plenty of time, he knew, but now wasn’t the time to relax.

Throwing Grace’s ropes and bed linen into the bin liner, he returned to the bedroom with a new bleach bottle and turned the mattress. The place still stank but it didn’t matter: there was nothing to tie him to the place. The letting agent’s eyes had lit up when he presented her with three months’ rent in cash; she hadn’t even asked him for ID. He bent down and manoeuvred the rucksack carefully onto his back, put his arms through the straps of the backpack to secure it to his front, and grabbed the bin liner. The suitcase stood by his side. Did he have everything? He wasn’t planning to return to this place.

He closed the door behind him and locked it quickly, padding to the end of the hall in bare feet. He rounded the corner cautiously. 305 was visible from the lifts, but sat down a long corridor from the main corridor, which circled the interior of the building. He knew there was little chance anyone could have gotten there that quickly, but his heart still skipped a beat.

He walked quickly to the lift, dismayed to see the car wasn’t empty when it finally arrived.

“Wow, you have a lot of baggage there, my friend,” said a genial-looking Indian man who was leaning against the bar at the back of the car.

“Yeah, I’m headed back to the States,” he said in what he hoped was a convincing accent.

“Let me help you with that,” the man replied as the lift chimed its arrival on the ground floor.

“It’s fine, thanks. I’ve got a cab waiting outside,” Daniel smiled.
Shit
, he thought,
what if I bump into him again?

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. So you live here too?” Daniel asked, standing in the doorway.

“Yes, in 410.”

Another complication,
Daniel thought, as the taxi driver loaded his baggage into the back of the car. He was getting sloppy. He berated himself all the way to the airport.

Once there, he alighted and walked into Departures, and left the building again through Arrivals.

On the way back to the city, he asked the driver to stop on a bridge. Joining the man at the back of the car, he seized the bin liner and quickly threw it over the barrier. He had noticed the surfeit of rubbish on his way to the airport. The driver watched him with a curious expression, but walked back to the driver’s door when Daniel handed him four thousand baht notes.

Back on Soi Sok Cha, Daniel walked through the lobby to the lifts. The letting agent had been delighted to help him find a new apartment for his Australian friend, and had helpfully acquired a property in the building next door to Suriani Apartments. It even had a youth hostel spanning two of the floors, he had learned at the viewing – that was why he had seen so many backpackers in the area, he now knew. It was perfect: he needed to be in close proximity to the cameras in order for him to be able to pick up their signal.

He closed the door and set the rucksack on the ground. Even though it was an expensive hiking model, his shoulders still ached from the burden of carrying it from the taxi. It had been an excruciating effort to carry it so nonchalantly, as if the contents were light.

The apartment was a similar size to the other one, except this one was more bright and modern. It was whiter than it was grey, and the floors were covered with cool tiles, rather than carpet –so oppressive in the humidity. This one was open-plan too, but the kitchen was past the living room, behind a long breakfast bar unit surrounded by tall bar stools. It had three bedrooms: he was tired of sleeping on the couch, which he’d been forced to do since Grace had turned up and left him with no choice but to surrender his bedroom.

He dragged the rucksack to the bedroom, lifted Kirsty out gently and laid her on the bed.
She finally looks peaceful
, he thought.

“How long until you’re like this all of the time?” 

He turned and began to draw the new coil of rope from one of the rucksack’s side pockets. Something caught his eye. He turned just as Kirsty rolled her feet off the side of the bed and plunged one of his pre-filled syringes into his shoulder. He dropped the rope and grabbed at her wrist before she could depress the plunger.

“Nice try,” he said, pushing her back on the bed and pulling the needle from his arm. He winced with discomfort. He noticed she had pulled the catheter from her arm. “You weren’t fast enough though. And you should have aimed for a blood vessel.” He sighed. He had thought she’d given up struggling. “I went to a lot of effort to get you here and you repay me like this?”

“Let me go! Just let me go! How long are you going to keep me here like this?” she shrieked, struggling to fight him off. He loomed over the bed and knelt on her chest to hold her down as he thrust the needle into her arm. “Get off me! What do you think you’re going to achieve by doing this? You think I’m going to come round and be your little girlfriend? Is that it? Not a chance in hell!”

Once he’d slowly emptied the contents into her arm, he stood back, appraising her. “You’re acting like a child Kirsty. When are you going to stop?”

She turned away, movement slowed already. “You’re mad. Completely fucking mad.” The last word was drawn out unnaturally as she struggled to stay lucid. 

When he was sure she was out cold, he picked up the rope he had abandoned on the floor. He set about coiling it around her and under the bed, over and under. It was laborious, but it was the best way. He couldn’t allow her to walk around the apartment yet, especially after that outburst. It worried him: he’d given her the same dosage as before. Was she starting to build tolerance to the effects?

Returning to the living room, he wheeled the suitcase into one of the other bedrooms.