They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

24 22 July 2007 — Roel Albazi

Normally the drive from the centre of Brighton to the small five-storey building in Shoreham, where he owned his pizza restaurant as well as, five floors above, his penthouse office and apartment suite, took around twenty minutes, and a little longer in the rush hour. But it was only midday and he’d been in the taxi for over twenty-five minutes, and they’d not yet made it past Hove Lagoon, the children’s playground with two boating ponds and a cafe.

‘What’s going on?’ he said to the driver. ‘We haven’t moved in five minutes — what the hell?’

Two exasperated hands rose in the air in front of him. ‘Roadworks!’

The wipers kept up a steady, rhythmic clunk-clunk, and droplets of water blurred the views from the side windows.

‘Shall we cut inland?’

‘I was there earlier. Roadworks also — we’ll be moving again in a minute.’

Albazi looked at his phone. No message from Sharka. He called his number again, and once more got his voicemail. He left an even angrier message, then sat back and reflected on those photographs of his family on Song Wu’s desk. With anyone else it might have been an idle threat, but not with her. In the years of taking her handsome payments, he’d seen enough to know that just as her organization was an efficient money-making machine, it was an equally efficient killing machine.

The traffic finally inched forward and they began picking up pace as they passed a green temporary traffic light then travelled along a single-file, coned lane. The solitary landmark chimney of Shoreham power station slid past to their left, then warehouses along the wharf, the refiner, a berthed dredger.

A few minutes later, as they approached Shoreham High Street, the traffic came to an abrupt halt again. A police car on blue lights, siren screaming, shot past then stopped a short distance in front of them, blue lights still flashing.

Albazi could see through the windscreen that vehicles ahead were starting to turn around. A police officer with a white cap approached a van that was in front of them. Moments later, the van began turning round. Then the officer reached his taxi.

The driver lowered the window and the officer said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, the road is closed due to an incident and is likely to be closed for some while.’

‘My passenger’s got to get to Shoreham High Street, what do you suggest?’ the driver asked.

‘It’s only a quarter of a mile,’ the police officer said, shooting Albazi a glance. ‘To be honest, he’d be quicker to walk. The whole of Shoreham is at a standstill.’

‘What’s actually happened, officer?’ the driver asked.

‘An incident — that’s all the information I have at this moment,’ he replied.

‘I’ll walk,’ Albazi said. It would take him less than ten minutes to get to his office, although he’d be drenched by the time he got there. He paid the driver, climbed out and strode off quickly, turning his collar up and bowing his head against the hardening rain, a nagging feeling in his gut that something was wrong.

He passed the clubhouse of the Sussex Yacht Club, and a recently finished block of flats on the harbourfront. Vehicle after vehicle was turning round, and nothing was coming from the opposite direction. A few hundred yards ahead he could now see a blaze of flashing blue lights, and two marked police cars angled across the two-lane road, blocking it completely. Behind them was a line of blue-and-white tape. Maybe a car crash?

He tried Sharka again — and still got his voicemail. ‘Hey, man,’ Albazi said. ‘What the hell’s going on? Call me back!’

A young, uniformed police officer was standing in front of the tape, holding a clipboard. As Albazi approached her, he saw debris all over the pavement and road a couple of hundred yards further on — almost directly in front of his pizza restaurant. It was mostly furniture, he realized. It looked at first glance as if a removals lorry had overturned. Filing cabinets, some of their drawers open, files spewed out and getting sodden on the wet tarmac; two sofas, a swivel chair, a shattered desk — his desk, he realized with dawning horror. His bed, his clothes, his paintings, sculptures, books, computer, phones, fridge, drinks cabinet, the bottles lying all around, many broken. His prized cigar humidor, with over four hundred Cuban cigars, many spilled out and being ruined by the rain. Sparkling shards of glass everywhere.

He stood for a moment, in numb disbelief at what he was seeing. Had Sharka gone mental? Was this his doing — some kind of a protest? He looked up and could see the wide window of this side of his office was mostly gone.

Bewildered, he said to the officer, ‘Those are my things. I need to go through.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I can’t allow that.’

‘You don’t understand.’ He pointed along the road, then up at the top floor of the building. ‘That’s my office, these are all my things.’

She had the decency to look shocked. ‘Have you annoyed your landlord or something, sir? Or is it a domestic dispute?’

‘I own the building, that’s where I live and work. I don’t know what’s happened, I need to go through.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m not authorized to let anyone through.’

‘You’ve got to let me — I—’

He was interrupted by the sound of a large vehicle behind him; at the same time, his phone pinged with a message.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, sir — unless there’s a way you can get in at the rear of the building? I’m afraid you can’t come through here.’

He turned to see a low-loader truck halt at the tape.

‘How long?’

‘I can’t say, sir. It’s likely to be some while.’

‘You are joking?’

The main entrance to the building was at the side, but he needed to go through the cordon to access it. He glanced down at his phone and saw the message.

He stared at the message in rising fury, as another police officer untied one end of the tape from around a lamp post to allow the vehicle through. Albazi seized his chance and, ignoring the shouts of the officer with the clipboard, ran through the opened cordon, breaking into a sprint, dodging around the debris of his office and home, ignoring more shouts, and into the side alley, where the main entrance door to all the parts of the building above the pizza parlour was sited. It was ajar.

He went straight in, past the creakily slow old lift, and began racing up the flights of the fire escape stairs. As he neared the top he heard a loud bang, followed by another, then another. BLAM-BLAM-BLAM.

He hesitated but it didn’t sound like gunshots.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM again.

He took the final flight silently, on tiptoe. As he reached the top he saw a tall police officer and a shorter, burly one, standing outside his closed front door, trying to break it open with their yellow metal battering ram.

‘Officers!’ he called out. ‘Stop, this is my place!’

They both turned to face him. He held up a small bunch of keys. ‘I think you’ll find it easier to use these,’ he said.

The tall officer, who was perspiring, said, ‘I dunno what your door’s made of, but it would keep a tank out.’

‘It would,’ agreed Albazi, as he turned the key in the first of the three locks. ‘It would stop a seventeen-pound tank shell.’

‘Get many of those fired at you, do you, sir?’ asked the burly one, her face red from the exertion in the stuffy hallway.

‘I have a debt collection business,’ Albazi replied, turning the second key. ‘Not everyone likes me.’

‘A pissed-off customer is it, do you think?’ the tall one asked. ‘Broken in and thrown all your stuff out?’

‘No one breaks in here,’ he said, as he turned the final key. Then, holding his breath, scared of what he might find, he stepped into his normally beautiful hallway. Immediately he heard the sound of running water. Then he realized the deep pile carpet was sodden. There were shadows on the walls where some of his paintings had hung, now lying on the road.

‘Skender!’ he shouted out. ‘Skender!’

‘Someone in here, sir?’ the tall officer asked. ‘But the door was locked, surely?’

‘They all lock automatically when the door is shut,’ Albazi replied tersely. Water was pouring out from under the bathroom door. He strode up to it and flung it open. The room was empty, but all the taps of the washbasin, bath and the shower were turned on to their max. Water was pouring over the top of the huge double-tub and the copper washbasin. Splashing across the floor to reach them, almost in tears, he turned off the taps.

‘Got a spiteful girlfriend or something?’ the burly one asked. Her colleague had stepped away and was walking into another room.

‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ Albazi said. ‘I—’

There was a shout from the other officer. ‘In here!’

Albazi, followed by the other officer, hurried along the hallway and into the scene of devastation that had, just a few hours ago, been his immaculate, beautiful office. Blood red paint had been sprayed randomly over his carpet and up the walls. For some moments he was so incensed that he completely failed to notice the motionless, naked figure of Skender Sharka, lying where his bookshelves had been just a few hours earlier.

His huge, muscular body lay sprawled out at an odd angle, as if he was trying to swim the crawl along the floor and had frozen in mid-stroke as his arms hit the wall.