Syndrome, page 4
Eric shot.
A second later, an acoustic signal declared the end of the test.
‘Detective Shaw!’
Just out of the changing room, Eric turned to the source of that voice.
The instructor was coming towards him. He was almost two metres tall, with wide shoulders and the threatening appearance of a bouncer, but the smile he was showing made him look more like a gentle giant. ‘I was hoping to catch you before you left.’
‘Burke, still here at this late hour?’ Eric offered his hand, and the other man shook it with vigour.
‘I stayed to watch your test.’
They headed for the exit side by side.
‘Oh, I didn’t realise I had such a spectator.’ Eric smiled inwardly. Actually, he’d figured as much.
Since he’d started going regularly to the Metropolitan Police Specialist Centre in Gravesend a few months ago, Burke had offered to look after him. The instructor had found it quite extraordinary that a team chief at the Forensic Services should be so determined on improving his shooting performance on the field, even more considering his age. At fifty-one, someone in his position seldom thought about a drastic change of course in their career with the police. Or, if they did, they aspired to a safer position, certainly not to put themselves in the front line. Then, when Eric had explained he had no intention of giving up being a forensic investigator, but he just wanted to keep up to date and prepared for any and all situations, the other man had looked at him with a smirk. He must have understood it was more than that.
On the other hand, the centre had become a wonderful outlet for Eric to shed the frustrations oppressing him every day. And it often became a convenient excuse to evade responsibility in a legitimate way. As he’d done that evening, when, instead of answering a call to a crime scene, he’d asked Jankowski to cover for him. On the spot he’d felt vaguely guilty, but now, after emptying three magazines in as many different scenarios and after a nice, refreshing shower, he felt freer than ever, relaxed. In moments like that, he would’ve really liked to stop locking himself up in the lab, walk away from everyone he’d worked with over the years, forget about the past, and start afresh with a new version of him, a more aggressive one. An Eric Shaw who was the master of his life again, who had no fear that events beyond his control, but to which he’d given rise, meddled with his thoughts and simplest gestures, tormenting him with no possibility of a solution.
Had he been ten years younger, he would’ve seriously entertained the idea of making a career change, but now it seemed complicated, perhaps even a bit ridiculous.
‘I wouldn’t like to be a thug standing in your way.’ Burke laughed loud. ‘No misses. And all shots in the chest or head!’ He sneered. ‘Not bad for a lab rat.’
‘Really?’ asked Eric, feigning surprise. ‘I was sure I’d hit at least two in the arm.’
‘Ah!’ The instructor patted him on his right shoulder, the one with which he’d broken down the last door.
A twinge of pain broke out again. Eric gritted his teeth to avoid complaint. He was no longer a young man. In other times, his body wouldn’t have suffered from such an impact at all. But now he was sure that, for at least a few days, even the mere action of breathing would be a pain.
‘Such a shame you’ve no intention of getting to the front line! You’ve got the hunter’s instinct.’
‘I’m one of those hunters who’d rather follow the tracks.’
Burke burst into laughter again and gave him another pat.
Ouch!
When he reached York Street, all the adrenaline had already been drained, leaving room for exhaustion. By some miracle, he found a place to park almost in front of his building, occupying the one freed by another vehicle in which a couple had just driven off. Usually when he came home late, he was forced to drive all the cross streets at least five times, until he found a spot. That was the reason why he’d rather use public transport, but even though Gravesend was well served, he didn’t fancy travelling for an hour in a crowd of strangers, especially on the way up, switching from the Tube and the rail. Isolating himself in his SUV, ignoring the traffic outside, belonged to his ritual, allowing him to play the part he’d created for himself in his mind, for facing those incursions at the training centre.
He turned on his car alarm and headed for the front door, while going through all his pockets to find his keys. He could hear their tinkle, but not find them. He took out his smartphone, the infernal contraption, and his wallet. As the latter came out, the key ring caught on a corner of the device and fell onto the pavement, when he was just a few steps away from his destination.
Eric put everything back in his pocket and bent down. Another pang forced him to perform the opposite movement more carefully. In the end, he succeeded in opening the front door without further accidents. He slowly climbed the stairs, already imagining himself in his soft bed. With a little luck he would sleep like the dead, without dreams. He’d rather not think about tomorrow. That wouldn’t make the coming day easier.
Once he reached his floor, the doorway of his flat, he put the key in. He turned once, and the door opened. He was sure he’d turned twice before leaving. He always turned twice.
He half closed his eyes and sighed. His plan for a quiet sleep was fading away and, for a brief moment, he entertained the idea of locking the door again and leaving. Yes, but where?
He opened it wide. The room inside was dark. There was silence all about him. He closed the door, took off his jacket and hung it slowly, trying to keep it quiet.
He went to the living room. The curtains were open and the artificial lights from the metropolis, reflecting on the blanket of clouds covering it, brightened the place. Empty.
He didn’t turn on the lamp; he headed straight to the bedroom. No lighting was on there either, not a soul in sight, but on the right, under the bathroom door, a glimmer of light filtered.
Silently, Eric walked on. Even in that room, the curtain was pulled back. He approached the window. Out there, everything looked quiet and a thousand times more attractive than what was waiting for him within those four walls. He swallowed hard. His throat had dried out. Each passing second increased his anxiety and the rhythm of his pulse.
He might as well tackle the problem now.
He strode to the bathroom. Keeping himself from thinking, he grabbed the handle and opened the door. And he saw her.
The pale skin of her shoulders, down to the upper edge of her breasts, surfaced from the water filling the bath. The long hair was flattened on both sides of her face. Being wet, it looked darker and void of that auburn light that was well visible under the sun. Her green eyes opened wide, her body had a slight wince. Then Adele’s lips widened in a faint smile.
‘What’re you doing here?’ Eric asked in a rude tone.
He wasn’t pretending. He was angry, but with himself. Just a glance at her and his previous determination had dissolved, leaving room for desire.
He was weak. That was all.
She cocked her head, while her left hand emerged from the water surface, ran along her neck and then back to her breast. ‘I think it’s quite evident: I’m taking a bath.’
Unwillingly, Eric had opened up his lips and imagined his own hand in place of Adele’s.
Weak.
‘And why on earth, pray tell, are you taking it in my flat?’ His voice was firm. If nothing else, he’d learnt how to disguise his state of mind. ‘Isn’t there water in Dorset Street? Or have you run out of bubble bath?’
With a laugh, Adele leaned back against the bath. Then she grew serious again. ‘I was hoping you’d join me.’
Eric looked away and ended up staring at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t win that battle. He backed away from the bathroom door, and he went and sat on the bed. His elbows resting on his thighs, he pushed his face into his hands.
A swoosh was followed by a stomping on the tiles. The light filtering in through his fingers grew dim for a moment, then brighter as soon as what had blocked it, moved away from the door.
As he raised his head, he found her before him, wrapped in his bathrobe. It was a bit too big for her, and though it was held by a belt, the top was loose, concealing very little of her body.
‘You must stop barging in here,’ he told her, but those words came out of his mouth like an entreaty. ‘All this just makes things more difficult.’
‘Difficult for whom?’ Adele crossed her arms. ‘For you? Ah, yeah, right, you’re the one who always wants to make things easier.’
‘I won’t let you goad me into another fight.’
There was a sudden laugh. She placed a hand on her hip and leaned forward a bit. ‘You don’t want me here.’ She aimed her inquisitive look at him. ‘Yet you didn’t get back the keys you’d given me.’ She shrugged her shoulders, making a perplexed face. ‘You didn’t even ask me to return them.’ She pointed to the bedroom door. ‘You could’ve replaced the lock, but in so many months, twenty-one months now, you’ve never done it.’ She flashed him a cunning smirk. ‘For someone claiming he doesn’t want me here, you aren’t very convincing.’
In truth, the reason why he hadn’t done it, the one he officially called so, was that he didn’t want to hurt her. Adele had problems, big problems. And as much as he didn’t wish it, she considered him the centre of her world. Once he’d acknowledged to himself what she was, he’d refused to be involved in the latent lunacy she was bringing along and that would end up infecting him, too. Yet at the same time, he’d been unable to turn his back on her, to walk out of her life.
Unable or unwilling?
No, it was much more complicated than that.
He rubbed a hand over his face. He was too tired to deal with that dilemma again. He’d wracked his brain about it for nearly two years and come up with nothing. And each passing day without a solution made the search for it more pointless. His attempt to escape, playing the action man shooting the bad guys, was just a way to give his mind a rest, otherwise it would collapse under the burden of the terrible secrets it was forced to carry.
‘You know what, Eric?’ The affection with which she’d pronounced his name brought him back to the present.
He confronted her eyes, whilst once more a sense of defeat pervaded him.
‘I’m fed up to the teeth with this act.’ Her voice had lost any trace of her typical challenging tone, turning into the reflection of his mood. ‘This shilly-shallying is absurd. You say it’s over between us, but it’s not true.’ She exhaled an ironic huff. ‘You almost refuse to speak to me for days, weeks. You even swap shifts with that arse Jankowski rather than meet me at a crime scene.’
What? Eric was about to complain. He raised an arm, opened his mouth to speak, but then shook his head. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t deny she was right. And the best part of it was that only now did he actually realise that.
‘Yeah,’ she commented, after waiting in vain for him to talk back. ‘And then, once the avoiding phase is over, you start staring at me, ogling me in front of everyone in the lab or even in the morgue. And at that point, we just have to meet alone, only the two of us.’ She shook her in disapproval. ‘And you know full well what happens. Only then you start saying again that it was a bad idea, that we have to stay apart, we have to see other people.’ She emitted a forced laugh. ‘Ah!’ She spread her arms. ‘Well, enough is enough. I don’t want to play anymore.’ She bent over, placing both hands on his shoulders.
Eric’s chest had started expanding and contracting faster and faster, while a blend of the scents of bubble bath and Adele’s skin reached his nostrils.
‘I don’t care what you want,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t get rid of me.’
September 2014
Eric and Adele stared at each other in silence, as the last shards of glass fell off the mirror where the bullet had lodged, and crashed to the floor.
‘It’s all over between us, isn’t it?’ she asked.
He nodded his head and looked down at his hand still holding her arm. He spread his fingers and, moving slowly, reached for the gun, which had ended up by his knee.
‘You can’t leave me.’ Adele’s imploring voice was quivering.
He turned his eyes to her again. Tear drops had resumed rolling down her face. A grip clamped his chest. Adele’s suffering tore through him.
‘What will become of me?’ It was pure desperation that he could perceive in her.
She’d spent the last twenty years idealising him, and now that he knew her true nature, she’d tried to end her own life, because she couldn’t accept losing him.
But was it really so?
He looked at the gun again, then her face, and then the rest of the room, while he recalled what had just happened, all they had said to each other, the contents of her computer, the people she’d killed, without pity or remorse.
How much could be genuine in the way she was looking at him, in her words, in that supposed suicidal gesture? How true was her desperation? What other terrible truths was she still hiding from him?
He squeezed the gun and stood up, while she kept looking at him, sitting on her heels, the picture of affliction. For a moment, he thought he saw again the scared child clinging to him as he carried her away from that house of death. Only she wasn’t that victim of the past anymore. ‘You don’t really need me, you’re a strong woman.’ Moving slowly, he turned his back on her and reached the table, where he placed the weapon.
A swish told him she’d risen too. ‘You knew.’ Her icy and controlled tone had replaced her whimpering.
Eric clenched his fists as disappointment shook his body. How he’d wished he was wrong.
‘Deep down you knew.’ Her voice had come closer. ‘Why haven’t you ever asked me about Garnish in these three months?’ She raised it. ‘So? Why?’
Yeah, why hadn’t he?
‘If someone found out it was me, they would soon understand you knew.’ She sniggered. ‘Everybody would see you as an accomplice. We’d go under together.’
She appeared to his right. Her eyes were on him as she stopped beside him. Eric couldn’t help but turn and confront her.
‘But luckily, nobody knows.’ Adele cracked a smile. Her left hand reached for his face, almost touched it, but then she just grazed her fingertips along his jaw. ‘Except for you … and me.’
June 2016
He would never get rid of her. It wasn’t just because she would never allow him. No. Eric was suffering from some sort of hostage syndrome. With her blackmail, Adele had shackled him to her, yet instead of feeling anger for her, he couldn’t help but love her.
Perhaps he was the only really crazy person.
‘Who knows what your fiancée would think if she knew that you’re the accomplice of a murderer?’
He sprang to his feet, pushing her away. Now he was the one looking from above. ‘Leave Catherine out of this!’
‘You’re not going to tell her, are you?’ she pressed on. ‘How can you possibly think of spending the rest of your life with someone without telling them something like that?’
He would’ve wanted to clarify that she wasn’t his fiancée at all. They were just seeing each other. Meeting Catherine again after so many years had seemed like a golden opportunity to him. They were no longer the boy and girl they’d been back then at university. Life had shaped them, matured them, led them to become disillusioned. Now she could be the perfect person to restore some balance in his confused, tormented existence. Perfect. But just as then, their relationship was incomplete. Time hadn’t changed their nature. They were so well-matched that there was no room for unpredictability. Her company was pleasant, reassuring, easy.
But did he truly like easy things?
A drop of water broke free from Adele’s hair, traversed her brow, slipped along the side of her nose, and reached her mouth. She wiped it with the tip of her tongue.
He could never tell Catherine the truth. No, he could never tell it to anybody. That was what she was saying to him, and she was right. Only with her he could be totally honest, only with her he had no reason to lie. Only with her, he had no secrets.
But could he ever trust her again?
Did it really matter?
Adele untied the bathrobe belt. ‘Who knows how she’d react if she knew?’
For a moment, his mind disconnected from his body. He saw his own hand grabbing her neck and pushing her until her shoulders met the opposite wall, right beside the door. He added his other hand. Adele’s expression didn’t change. She just adapted to his assault without revealing the slightest fear. Eric’s fingers craved to contract, and erase that smugness from her face and that triumphant look of hers.
‘There would be a definitive solution.’ Her words were a mellow whispering. ‘It would be to kill me.’ Only the rhythmic rising and lowering of her chest betrayed her feelings. But it wasn’t fear. ‘What d’you want to do, Eric? Kill me?’
It was excitement, same as that controlling his will.
‘Or shag me?’
Tuesday
That side of the building was partly concealed by scaffolding covered with a tarpaulin that depicted its original appearance. Sticking out from it, a large pipe gathered the debris and dumped it directly into the back of a lorry. The latter, parked right on the intersection, blocked his view of possible cars coming out from that side road and almost forced him to stop. As he turned the corner, however, he immediately identified a police car beside the typical Victorian-style entrance. He’d been awakened by that call and to save time, given that the scene was in the opposite direction of the department, he’d decided to take his SUV, where he always kept a kit, just in case. The street was quite narrow, and of course the few parking places were already taken, so Eric, instead of pulling over by the pavement in the no-parking zone, jumped over it.
