open the door to Proctor’s flat with my key – with his key – and my breathing stops.
I have spent the night on the streets. This is nothing new for me. I am familiar with the city as a bed. Like so many others in London, I’ve slept in shop doorways and close to the warm air exhaled by Underground ventilation units. I’ve sneaked into hotel service areas and stolen a few warm hours. Sometimes, a train station – or a bus station – has been the best place to rest. But tonight I wasn’t looking for sleep. I was looking for answers.
So I walked through the streets, mindless of my direction and only vaguely aware of my surroundings, which is unusual for me. I have learned to be cautious. Working at night in the seamier areas of the city, one quickly develops a sixth sense for danger. I can see behind me. I can feel a threat, smell its scent on the polluted air. Unless the drugs or the Special Brew have kicked in. Then I’m useless and vulnerable, which was how I was last night. All my defences were down.
I cannot believe what I have done. Until dawn, I don’t honestly think I even accepted what I had done. It seemed like a dream. But morning tends to bring clarity, in all its painful guises.
I don’t understand why I reacted the way I did. I knew Proctor was going to touch me, to kiss me. I wanted him to. The moment had been telegraphed; I had plenty of time to kill it before it even happened but I chose not to. I knew he would be tender and understanding. When he put his hand on my hip and his lips on my lips, it was much as I hoped it would be. No, it was better than I hoped it would be. And then … I snapped. Just as I did with my last client, even though the two situations could hardly have been more different.
Around seven this morning, I stopped at a café for a cup of coffee. I only just resisted my craving for a cigarette. For an hour, I agonized about what I should do before stumbling to a decision. It was a cowardly choice; to sneak back to Bell Street, collect my things and flee. I prayed Proctor would be out to make it easier for me. Then I could leave my keys with a hastily-scribbled note of apology. A month ago, his absence would have been an invitation to scour for valuables. But not now. I owe Proctor. He is the only man who has shown me any kindness in the last two years. And how have I repaid him for that kindness? By cutting him with a knife.
I cannot believe myself. What kind of cold-blooded creature have I become?
There were papers strewn across the floor in the hall of Proctor’s pristine flat. They were the first thing that Stephanie saw. The self-pity and the shame evaporated. Her skin prickled, her throat dried. She paused for a moment, pushing the door completely open and listening for the sound of movement. Nothing. Then she stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind her.
The paper trail led to the office on the right. From the short hall, she could see empty desk-drawers on the floor, the swivel chair on its side, the activated computer screen. She turned left. In the kitchen, every cupboard and drawer had been investigated. The fridge was empty. Its door was open, all its contents spread across the tiles. Clean cutlery cluttered the steel sink. Proctor’s bedroom looked no more dishevelled than that of the average student but, normally, it was clinically clean and tidy. The mattress had been removed from the bed and sliced apart. The sheets were screwed into a bundle in the corner. The cupboards had been checked, all the slatted doors were open. In the bathroom, the bath itself contained all that had been inside the medicine cabinet and the cupboard beneath the sink.
Proctor was in the living room, an island in a scarlet ocean.
Stephanie stood over him and found she was unable to cry out for help, to gasp in horror, to shed a tear. This wasn’t Proctor. It was only his body. Just as she wasn’t Stephanie when a stranger was using her. The spirit was gone but the sight still stopped her heart.
Proctor had been shot in the forehead and through the left hand. Also, there were dark glossy stains on his shirt and on his trousers, one on the left thigh and one around each knee. The bandage that had been wrapped around his right hand during the night lay in a crumpled heap on the sofa. The stitches had been plucked free of the injury that Stephanie had inflicted upon him and the gash had been deepened and extended. There were four cross-cuts on the same palm and she could see that the little finger, the index finger and the thumb had all been broken. His eyes were frozen open. A fat drop of blood sat on the left pupil.
She could not imagine the agony he had endured before his death and wondered how his torturer had prevented Proctor from screaming; howls of pain would surely have alerted the other residents of the mansion block. Ransacking suggested the killer had been looking for something specific. Torture suggested the killer hadn’t found it. Stephanie wondered whether the prize was what lay behind the panel in the bathroom. She had noticed that it was intact. Or maybe the killer was after something else – something that was actually retrieved. A piece of hard information, perhaps? A secret locked in Proctor’s mind? Would he have surrendered it? He must have known that he was going to die so did he try to take it to the grave? How resistant had he been to the pain? How resistant would she have been?
Stephanie picked up the phone. She pressed nine once, then twice. Think about it. Then she stopped, before replacing the receiver. There was nothing she could do for Proctor now. She was all that was left. She wondered whether she was in danger herself. Had the intruder expected to find both of them in the flat or was Proctor the only target? And who had the intruder been? Bradfield? An associate of his? Or someone else, someone invisible to her?
She needed time to think and somewhere safe to do it.
Auto-pilot engaged and emotions temporarily suspended, she drifted through the flat. Her little rucksack was in the corner of the living room, its contents scattered across the cherry table. The money she had stolen from her King’s Cross clients was gone, everything else – the worthless stuff – had been left. The panic rose within her but she beat it back. She returned her belongings to the bag and searched for Proctor’s overcoat. That was what he had been wearing when she had seen him leaving St Mary’s Paddington. She found it in the bedroom among a heap of clothes on the floor. The wallet lay beside it. The cash was gone. Only the cards remained; Barclays Connect and Visa. She rummaged through her own pockets and found six pounds seventy.
She put his wallet into her rucksack and went into Proctor’s office. She examined the computer screen. It was a letter to a features editor of a magazine she did not recognize. She scrolled down the page. The content was innocuous. Then she remembered that he had told her that he kept nothing of value on his desk-top. The necessity for torture became more apparent.
It seemed Proctor had kept his filing cabinet locked and had not been forthcoming over the whereabouts of the key since it had been prised open with a hammer and a screwdriver, which had both been left lying on top of it. The files had been examined and discarded. Stephanie got down on her hands and knees and began to sift through the papers.
It took thirty-five minutes to find the slip of paper with the PIN code for the Visa card on it. She found no number for the Connect card but made a note of Proctor’s birth date, his phone numbers, his fax number, his National Insurance number, his passport number. A three-month-old bank statement revealed a nine hundred and eighty pound credit in Proctor’s current account. She hoped his Visa card was as healthy.
She took the screwdriver from the top of the filing cabinet and went to the bathroom, where she unfastened the panel and retrieved Proctor’s lap-top and the plastic pouch containing the seven floppy-disks. There was too much to squeeze into her rucksack so she found another small shoulder bag on the bedroom floor. She helped herself to a tatty Aran jersey, a relic from a bygone era in Proctor’s personal fashion history. She also took some thick socks, three T-shirts and a navy blue silk scarf, which she wrapped around her throat. On the cherry table, by her rucksack, she noticed Proctor’s portable phone, which was recharging. She took it.
Her scavenging concluded, Stephanie wanted to do something about Proctor, to cover him, or to arrange him in some way that looked less awkward – less pained – and then to alert someone. But she did none of these things.
Instead, she gathered her bags and left the flat, taking care to double-lock the front door as Proctor had always insisted