A Lovely Way to Burn

Nineteen

The door to her apartment was ajar. Stevie crept down the hallway and rang her neighbour’s doorbell, but there was no response. She had been burgled once before, three years ago. When the police had eventually appeared, hours after she had phoned them, they had been coolly indifferent, as if their job was to verify the facts for the insurance company, rather than find the perpetrators. Stevie couldn’t imagine that their response would be any swifter this time, even if she told them she was afraid that whoever had broken in might still be lurking there.

She leant against the wall in the corridor. The best thing to do was to walk away, phone Derek and arrange to meet him somewhere else, or not to phone Derek at all, just dump the laptop at the hospital, get in the car and keep on driving. But if the man who had attacked her thought she was privy to whatever was hidden on the laptop, losing it might not be enough to free her of him.

Stevie took off her trainers, pushed the door tentatively open and peered inside. The coat stand had been felled. It lay on its side amongst her scattered coats and hats, but the hallway was empty, the flat silent. She thought again about walking away. There was a road-map of the British Isles in the car. It would be easy to close her eyes and stick a pin into a random destination, somewhere no one would connect her with, and drive there.

Stevie flattened herself against the lobby wall again, took out her mobile and pressed Joanie’s number. Joanie, Joanie, Joanie flashed onscreen but Derek didn’t pick up.

‘Fuck.’ Stevie mouthed the word.

She was tired, bruised and filthy, the grit of the car park mixed with blood and sweat on her skin. Joanie’s death mingled with Simon’s in her mind. Stevie knew she wouldn’t win in a physical fight against her car-park attacker but part of her wanted to have a go. She pushed open the door to her apartment and slipped inside. Her satchel was heavy and awkward but she kept it strapped across her body. Somewhere outside a drill started up; the soundtrack of the city. Stevie tiptoed along her hallway, breathing in as she passed each open door.

She shifted her bag to her back, stepped over the coat stand and crept into the kitchen. Cupboards had been swept clean, crockery and glasses shattered on the floor, but the knife block was still sitting in its place next to the cooker. Stevie trod carefully, cursing her bare feet, and slid the carving knife from its slot.

Outside the drill rumbled on in sporadic bursts. She let its noise mask the sound of her progress, moving when it moved, freezing when it stopped, all the time holding the knife firmly in front of her.

Someone had taken her flat apart. There had been no malice in the act. There was no graffiti on the walls as there had been last time, no turd coiled on the rug. The break-in had been carried out thoroughly and methodically, by someone looking for something.

Books and CDs had been spilled from their shelves in the sitting room, cushions tossed free of the couch and easy chairs, the furniture itself turned on its back to make sure nothing had been hidden below, or taped to its base. Drawers were pulled from the sideboard, their contents dumped on the floor. Stevie saw her mother’s rings, her own cheque book and emergency credit card, and realised that nothing had been stolen.

Shirts, trousers and dresses were tumbled together in her bedroom like massacre victims. The duvet had been dragged from the bed, the mattress tipped to the floor. The wardrobe door was ajar, a few dresses still hanging drunkenly on their hangers.

The drilling stopped and Stevie stopped too, holding her breath until the racket resumed. She managed three steps forward, three steps closer to the darkness behind the half-open door, before the drilling paused again. She primed herself, like a sprinter waiting for the starter’s gun.

Her mobile phone chirped news of a message, loud as an aeroplane crash.

Stevie lunged forward and yanked the door wide, holding the knife high above her shoulder, plunging it into the darkness, letting out a yell she had never heard before.

There was no one there.

She leant into the wardrobe’s empty shadows, laughter bubbling from within her. She wanted nothing more than to close the closet door and sit there in the must and the black, but she forced herself to check her office and the bathroom. When she was sure there was no one lurking anywhere in the flat, she pulled her mobile from her pocket. The message had come from Joanie’s phone. It was short and to the point: Take the laptop to Iqbal. An address in Clapham followed.

Stevie texted back:

I’ll get there ASAP

Thanks

The front-door lock was beyond her ability to repair, the door itself splintered but still sure on its hinges. Stevie closed it and put on the security chain. She dragged the Ercol sideboard she had been so proud of from the living room and set it against the door. Some empty wine bottles had been dumped on the floor with the rest of her recycling. She gathered a few and put them on the table. The arrangement wouldn’t stop an intruder but it would make a racket if anyone disturbed it.

Stevie undressed and stood in the shower, letting the water course over her body. She dried herself, smeared her cuts with antiseptic cream and swallowed two anti-inflammatory pills. Normally she would have walked naked through the rooms of her flat, letting the air soothe her skin, but now she went straight to the bedroom and sorted through the muddle of clothes until she found underwear, a running vest and a black tracksuit. Even stripped of its sheets the bed looked like the perfect haven, but she ignored it, pulled on fresh clothes and went through to the shattered kitchen. There were two ill-assorted Lean Cuisines, a beef chow fun and a shrimp Alfredo, in the freezer. Stevie packed a dishtowel with ice cubes, blasted both of the ready meals in the microwave, and ate standing at the worktop, holding the ice to her swollen face.

The apartment had meant a lot to her. It had been her touchstone, the sign that she had made something of herself since she had first arrived in London, armed with only her journalism degree. Now she wondered if she would ever live there again.

It was half an hour since Derek’s text. Stevie put a bottle of water, some energy bars, a packet of painkillers, her phone charger and the carving knife in the satchel beside Simon’s laptop. She covered the worst of her bruises with make-up, then went through to the living room, slipped her mother’s rings over her grazed knuckles, and left the apartment. Stevie pulled the door shut behind her, but didn’t bother to look back and check if it stayed closed.