Darkest Place (25 page)

Two weeks ago, she'd stood in the foyer with her neighbours on a bad day. Elizabeth had died getting out
of her bed. The official version was that she'd tripped and hit her head, perhaps a little unsteady from new painkillers. Elizabeth had a loft but she'd slept in a bedroom off the living space. Did it matter? If you could get into a loft, you had access to a whole apartment. Maybe Elizabeth
was
groggy – and maybe she was scared. Scared and groggy. Scrambling out of bed, terrified of what was in the room with her.

Carly ran her eyes around the corridors until she found Elizabeth's door on the first floor. She'd lived in the centre of the north wall. There was a pre-fab ventilation chute that ran along that wall. With vents that opened into the apartments.

And now Carly needed to see it for herself.

It was almost 10 pm but it didn't matter – it was always night in the ceiling. The only thing that mattered was that it wasn't close to three thirty. That was when
he
came. And Carly didn't want to be in the tunnels if he was roaming around tonight.

She ran the rope through the carabiner and belay device, dropped her legs into the void and found the ladder with her feet. It had been cold outside when she returned from the hospital and the wind had picked up since then, but the ventilation shaft felt the same as before: mild temperature, the updraught a whisper across her face. The difference was that a hot, pressing need to know was overriding her fear as she made the long climb down to the pre-fab chute above the first floor.

Getting to it from the ladder was the first problem. The chute was on the wall behind her, there were hand- and footholds along the adjacent brickwork to reach it, but it involved a big sideways step over a long drop. It reminded her that the access was designed for maintenance workers using regulation safety gear who worked with a buddy in case of accidents.

‘Don't think too hard about it,' she told herself as she reached out.

Her arm was at full stretch before she felt the cool metal of the handhold in her palm. She stuck out a shoe, found the step and hung for a second, spread across the corner like an insect.
Don't think about it
. She pushed off her back foot too hard and slammed the bricks, hitting a knee, roughing up her cheek, the smell of dust and cement filling her nose.

‘Okay, breathe. You made it.'

The next two along the straight wall were easy. At the mouth of the hole she ducked her head to shine the light into the chute. It was an endless, square metal tube. Like something from a movie, space stations and spies,
Aliens
versus
Mission Impossible
. The kind of thing you watched with a hand over your face thinking,
No way would I get in that
.

Well, she was here now.

Climbing in was easier than it looked and sitting at the lip, the back of her head pressed to the roof, she unhooked the rope, tied it to the rung outside, turned onto her hands and knees and crawled.

Carly knew the apartments along here were two- and three-bedrooms, but she had no idea how they were configured or how many vents to count before she got to Elizabeth's wardrobe. It was a minute of slow progress before she reached the first one.

Nate was wrong, the vent wasn't the same as the others and it didn't look into the apartment below. It was in the top of the pre-fab chute, opening into the ceiling cavity above – and it was just a large, rectangular hole covered in a grating of a wide-weave wire. Sticky with grime, the cover was riveted to the metal chute and didn't budge when Carly pushed.

‘Maybe I'm the only idiot to do this.'

She crawled past three more vents, inspecting each, telling herself to keep going, less and less convinced she should. The next one changed her mind. When she slipped her fingers through the grating, the cover lifted straight up, separating from the chute.

Carly sat up, her head and shoulders rising through the hole into the space above. Shining the torch around, she saw another tunnel with beam walls and insulation padding. There was brickwork, too, where the big beams butted the north wall. Ahead of her, she could see a hole in the insulation where it had been cut around a vent.

Climbing carefully from the chute, Carly lunged her way over. It was rectangular-grid variety, clean, and it dropped down with a
snick
. The doors of the wardrobe below were closed, the shelves were empty. Elizabeth had had neighbours on both sides, a couple of her nieces had packed up her clothes and personal belongings last week. Which meant she was looking into Elizabeth's apartment. And Elizabeth had died stumbling from her bed.

He'd been here too.

Realisation made Carly reel back from the vent with such force that she toppled onto the insulation pad, catching her thigh on a cross-timber, ripping a hole in her leggings.

‘You fucking arsehole.'

Her voice was loud with anger, possibly loud enough to carry into the apartments below. She didn't care. She wanted to storm about, stamp her feet, throw something. She had to settle for kicking the timber wall.

She should go, she told herself. Take photos, get back to Nate's, write it all down, make a record of where she'd been and what she'd found. Lock herself in before it got too late, in case the bastard from her loft decided to climb into the ceiling tonight.

But she just sat on the timber beside the vent above Elizabeth's wardrobe. The apartment was empty, Elizabeth's memories were gone, the woman Carly had known for only a few weeks was ash in a jar somewhere – it didn't make sense for Carly to feel close to her here but she did. And she dropped her head in her hands and let the tears roll through the dust on her cheeks. For the friend she'd lost, for the thought of what might have happened the night she died. For the weight of what Carly knew now and the absence of anyone to tell.

Life is a long time
, Elizabeth had told Carly.

Long enough to move on again? Because Carly couldn't stay in the warehouse. Not now. Not when the police thought she was making it up. She could board up her vent, warn Brooke and Christina, maybe knock on doors and try to explain about the man in the ceiling to the other residents she thought were vulnerable. But she couldn't stay.

You need to dream bigger if you're going to get there.
Elizabeth had meant Paris, but Carly's dream had been here. In this warehouse, with these people, friends it had taken her a long time to find.

‘And now this is screwed up too.'

It wasn't Carly's fault this time but that was no consolation. Carly knew what was going on, that made it her responsibility.

She tipped her head against the timber at her back, rubbed her leg where the leggings had ripped. Go home, she told herself. Work it out there. Maybe he'd turn up and she could restrain him, knock him out, call the police and prove he existed.

‘They'd probably arrest me for assault.'

As she pushed to a crouch on the cross-timber, her heel slipped from the edge, something sharp scraping a heel.

‘Ow.'

Reaching down to the flap of skin that had torn, she noticed blood was already between her fingers. She angled the torch on her forehead, saw more blood on her palm, checked the hole in her leggings and uncovered a scratch on her thigh that was oozing crimson. Great, one nail sticking out and she'd found it twice. Thinking about rust and tetanus shots, she slid her hand between the insulation and the cross-timber and found something that was definitely not a nail.

She couldn't angle her head torch to see what it was in the shadows, so she switched on the small torch and blinked at the glint of metal visible in its glare, understanding what she was looking at but not why it was there.

It was a latch. The kind you might see on the front of a toolbox. She must have caught her tights and heel on the clip. But … it was a
latch
in a ceiling.

She flipped it up and a tiny crack showed in the timber. She pushed a fingernail into it, but something further along was holding it down. Dragging the insulation away, she found a matching latch. Flicked it up and pulled.

Carly's jaw dropped as the entire top of the cross-timber lifted like a long, thin lid, tipping up and back on tiny hinges.

It was a box. Handcrafted and divided into sections. She stared at it for long seconds, trying to make sense of it. Lots of sections and the sections held … packs of cards? She picked one set at random.

Not playing cards. Square and white on one side. She turned them over and a hot surge of adrenaline made her head spin and her vision darken. She squeezed her eyes, pulled in a breath, hoping her brain had misread what she'd seen.

It was a photo. Glossy, overexposed, weird angle. The kind of shot that was produced on the spot by a Polaroid camera. Of a bed, a person asleep under sheets, which were pulled and bunched under the chin. Carly knew the white hair and lined face. She was sitting above her apartment.

There were countless cards in the box and as Carly held the stack in her hand, something tight and agitated picked up inside her. In the first picture, Elizabeth's eyes were closed, her cheeks slack, her lips slightly parted. The next, Elizabeth on her back, the sheet gone, her nightgown pulled straight, hands arranged on her chest like she'd been laid out at a funeral home.

‘You
bastard
.'

She pressed the wad of photos to her chest, not wanting to see, not wanting to make it real. But it was too late for that. Teeth tight, she worked her way through the pile, skimming the images, some sense that they needed to be seen, for someone to comprehend what had gone on.

Different nightgowns, different poses. Sheets, blankets, a doona at times. Taken over time, through changing seasons. Sometimes underwear and skin. Some poses almost respectful, others hideous and humiliating.

When she'd finished, she straightened the cards, wedged the pack into its place in the box, curled her fingers into fists and squeezed. Until her hands shook and her knuckles ached and her lungs burned from lack of oxygen. Elizabeth was eighty-three. She had a bad hip and couldn't see without glasses. Why her? What was the point?

‘What is your
fucking
point?'

The crack of her anger bounced off the walls, trailing into the tunnel. Its echo reminded her that she was in a cavernous and secret place and that someone else, someone
cruel, knew how to get there. She glanced around, alarm sparking as the shock of what she'd found filtered into reality. This was evidence, tangible proof that someone had been here. It was also a warning. This was not a lark, a bit of crawling around ceilings and screwing with the residents' heads. The man in Carly's loft had targeted specific apartments, taken photos over a long time, built storage, carried it in here and concealed it. Carly didn't know the first thing about criminal profiles but his seemed pretty goddamn obvious: well-planned, meticulous, patient, agile and bizarrely, exceedingly twisted.

And she did not want to meet him in the ceiling.

She started to lower the lid and changed her mind – those photos did not belong here. She pulled stacks of them and pushed them into the pockets of her jacket. She couldn't take them all, there were too many, but she zipped in as many as she could. Relatched the lid and headed for the ventilation chute. Moving fast this time, ignoring the bruises on her knees and the burn in the backs of her legs, not thinking about Elizabeth, staying focused on the job of getting back.

It wasn't until she hauled herself into the tunnel above her own floor that she started to think about other vents. She stopped at the first one, felt around the timber. Then the next one. Then, crouched above her own, she noticed what was different. Around the first two vents there was a single piece of timber along each edge of the cover, forming a frame. Here, the border was doubled, two pieces of timber all the way around.

And there were latches tucked down the side of the thick padding of insulation.

Electricity fizzed in the tips of her fingers. She took a breath and blew it out. Flipped open the box.

‘You fucking bastard.'

About two-thirds of the tray held white cards: section after section, starting at the left. A filing system.

‘You twisted, screwed up, tiny, worthless nothing of a man.'

She didn't want to look at herself. She wasn't leaving them here, though. Unzipping her jacket, she laid it on the insulation and stacked the bundles of photos facedown in its centre without looking at what was on them. Then she rolled it up, tied the sleeves together,
snicked
open the vent and dropped it into her wardrobe.

Carly took a large mouthful of red wine and stared at the balled-up jacket on Nate's coffee table. She could smell him – on the soap from his shower and the long-sleeved T-shirt she'd found in his drawer. She wished he was here, wished someone would tell her what to do. Another swallow of wine and she pulled the jacket towards her.

She hadn't planned to look at the photos. As she'd stowed away the climbing gear, she'd thought about burning them in the sink. About packing a bag and leaving. Getting in her car and driving, finding an on-site caravan up the coast or a cheap hotel in Sydney, somewhere she could get distance to think. She'd thought about the police, too, but not for long. It was a long tale about dark spaces and a twisted man with treasure boxes hidden in ceilings – and it was past midnight. It wouldn't matter how calm and logical she was, a call like that would be another big, black strike against her. Calm and logical might even make it worse.

Now, as she unwrapped the stash, she could see the original stacks holding loosely together. She took another gulp of wine and began setting them out on the coffee
table. Facedown. She wanted to be organised before she fell apart.

Fourteen little piles lined up like a card game. She could tell not all of them were photos: some cards were slightly bigger and matt cardboard. When she was done, she drained her glass, refilled it and set it on the floor.

‘Okay, time to do this.'

 

She started on the left. A pile of five photos. Carly steeled herself and turned it over. Frowned. The top one was a close-up and it wasn't demeaning or horrifying. It was a picture of a watch. Her watch. On someone else's arm.

She slipped it to the back, eyed the next one. An earring, sitting on the palm of a hand: the one from the markets that she'd lost and found. Then a mug with lipstick on the rim. Her green scarf neatly folded. And a single black sock on the pink of an insulation pad.

Carly glanced along the row of stacks. He'd scared her in bed and stolen stuff from her life to photograph? Was that it?

She picked up the next pile and got her answer. The first picture was a circular glow surrounded by darkness, Carly's bed at its centre. The covers were removed and her body was spread-eagled on the sheet. She was wearing pyjamas, thank god. She'd never woken naked, but it didn't mean … She flipped to the next photo. Facedown and spread-eagled. Different pyjamas. Then a nightie hitched to her waist, dark thatch of pubic hair. Then a pyjama top unbuttoned, her breasts bared. Eight pictures, same angle, different nightwear, her body exposed in some, arms and legs straight and wide in each. The way she'd been when he was on top of her.

She stood up in a rush, paced away. Paced some more, hand over her mouth. She saw a tube of rolled paper on Nate's dining table – the building plans. She saw the wine on the floor, wanted to gulp it down, wasn't sure it would stay there.

‘Oh, fuck.' She ran for the half bath and vomited in the toilet.

She boiled the kettle, searched Nate's kitchen, discovered a bottle of Scotch and added a slug to her tea. Thinking as she moved stiffly about. The circle of light was a flash from a camera. He'd taken her bedcovers off, arranged her body, stood over her and snapped photos. It would have taken time, the flash would have been bright. Why hadn't she woken up?

The third stack was more photos. She skipped it and picked up the fourth, turning over cardboard squares.

Plain white except for the small, neat handwriting in impossibly straight rows. Carly squinted at the lettering. She couldn't read it all, a lot of the words seemed to be abbreviations. She understood what it was, though: dates, times, durations, activities, observations. The bastard had documented her like a goddamn science experiment.

Three weeks ago, he'd written:

Carly had brought her laptop with her and opened it now, googling the abbreviations. It didn't give her all the answers but she took guesses at what it meant – at 2.50 am, there was a three-minute interval (no mention of what for), her vision or visual response was nil, her muscles were slack,
her pulse ranged between 60 and 109 beats per minute, and it and her respiration increased on full contact. According to the arsehole in her ceiling, it was an improved result.

She wondered if the three-minute ‘interval' meant he'd arrived and waited three minutes to see if she'd wake up. The vision or visual reference was unclear. Possibly he checked her eyes, possibly he made a visual check of other responses. The rest, though, was appallingly obvious.

He could rearrange her body and clothes because she was slack and unresponsive. Her pulse and breathing had shot up when he was on top of her. And the result was better than earlier ones.

Carly rubbed at the hollow under her jaw again, remembering the thump of her pulse and the loud hiss of her breath. Maybe it was better she'd slept through the unbuttoning of her pyjamas, of her nightie being lifted and his hands on her.

Maybe if she'd woken, she could've kicked him in the face. Why the hell
hadn't
she?

She flipped through the rest of the stack – there were eight sets of records. One for every visit to her loft, she wondered?

She went back to the photos, found shots taken around her apartment. Close-ups of the inside of the pantry and fridge, her DVD collection, the contents of her bathroom cabinet, boxes of tampons under the basin, the tangle of knickers and bras in her drawers. Had he taken them as she lay drugged in bed? Or had he come back at other times? There was probably a name for it, voyeurism or something like it. Whatever it was, it made Carly glance warily at the windows and the neighbourhood beyond.

A gulp of Scotch-laced tea. Another stack of pictures. This lot made her burn. She supposed it was the comedy
reel, the gotcha shots, the kind you take when you are fourteen at a slumber party and someone drops off to sleep. Not shaving cream hair and drawn-on moustaches but close. Carly, asleep with her finger up her nose, others with a hand on her crotch, scratching her arse, middle finger salute. Three photos in a row – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

‘For fuck's sake. How old are you?' That thought made her pause.

The body on top of her had been strong and lean. He'd have to be agile to get in and out of the vents and through the pre-fab chute. A slim, fit older man could do it, but would he take arse-scratching photos? Would a forty- or fifty-year-old who was organised and calculating enough to keep vent covers clean, plant hidden storage, and detail pulse and respiration be juvenile enough to push her finger up her nose for a laugh? Because that's what it was. The arsehole was laughing at her. Collecting data, keeping files and having his own private joke.

Was that what he did to everyone he visited? How many other double rows of timber were in the ceiling? How many ugly collections of photos were up there?

Another stack of cards got her more neat, straight writing, but this time there was a different collection of data. Dates, measurements of some kind, acronyms and abbreviations scattered across the card: mcg, FEN, PPF, MDL, INO, Sal d., Aya, THC.

Googling ‘acronyms', she found a site that searched by category: medical, military, science and technological. Carly doubted she'd need military terms but any of the others might help.

FEN stood for Family Education Network, fentanyl and Far East Network. She searched the medical term fentanyl
and found: ‘a potent, synthetic opioid analgesic with a rapid onset and short duration of action'. The simple description said ‘A fast-acting anaesthetic.'

Carly pressed her hands to her chest as though the drug was surging through her now. Only she wasn't getting drowsy – her skin was itching and her heart was pounding, her tear ducts welled and her legs wanted to move. To escape. But it was too late for that.

‘He
drugged
me? I was
drugged
?'

Carly searched the other acronyms. There were no answers for some, but what she found told her plenty. Sedatives, hypnotics, hallucinogens and psychoactive drugs. Various combinations with measurements in micrograms.

Head spinning, face burning, she stood, paced, tried to get it under control. She straightened chairs, wiped Nate's counters, checked the front door was locked. Remembered other mornings she'd stalked her apartment, unable to keep still.

She'd thought it was her anxiety, her baggage.
You seem more rational
, Nate had said hours after she'd threatened him with a knife. She told him she was scared, he said it seemed more than that.
You were hyper, Carly. Totally wired.
He'd asked what she'd eaten, had wondered aloud about an allergic reaction.

‘I thought it was
me
,' she snapped at the empty room. She'd felt it all before. ‘I thought it was my brand of craziness.'

At the laptop again, she searched the drugs, found a grab bag of side effects – confusion, anxiety, memory loss, erratic heart rate, weakness, muscle stiffness, dry mouth. It explained a lot: the pacing, the lethargy, her thirst, why she couldn't tell the police exactly what had happened. It made her think again about the three-minute interval and the visual/vision response. Had he waited three minutes
after the drugs were given then checked her eyes? Had she been temporarily blinded? Was that why she couldn't see him or the nightlight? Or was it memory loss – maybe she
had
seen the flash and didn't remember. Maybe she was so out of it, the light didn't register. Maybe she'd been aware of it all and the images had been washed away on her bloodstream.

Not all of it, though. She remembered him on top of her, breathing on her face, whispering in her ear. She'd thought that was the beginning and the end, a man in her loft who fled when she woke. Now she wondered about the order of events and when the drugs had kicked in. Did he pose her body on the bed and take photos first or did he do that after he'd spread himself over her? She never saw him leave, the room was always empty when she stumbled for the stairs.

She rubbed her arm, thinking about injections – she'd never felt that kind of soreness. Wait, one of the acronyms, INO had stood for inhalation. Was she breathing the stuff in?

She thought about asthma inhalers and plastic tubes under her nose. And gas tanks and scuba divers and oxygen tents and …

‘Fuck.' She got up, walked away from it. ‘Enough. You've seen enough.'

She showered again, scrubbing at her skin, wondering about seeing a doctor for blood tests and the long-term effects of drug concoctions and the acronyms she hadn't been able to decipher. She thought, too, about the treasure box above Elizabeth's apartment.

Did he visit Elizabeth the night she died? If he'd given her sedatives and opiates, it wasn't just scaring an old woman. It was murder.