WALES 2022
WHEN I KNOCKED AT the door of the flat above the petrol station, nobody answered.
The plan was just to go and talk to Ceri. To figure out if he really was Arden. And, if so, to tell him all about Gracie and my predicament in the hope he’d agree to postpone the slaughter until after my stem cells were safely in her body. Surely he still held enough love for me to allow me two more days.
Patting the knife in my pocket to make sure it hadn’t dropped out, I rang the doorbell twice, waiting for the sound of footsteps plodding down the stairs to the small white door. And then I waited some more, unsure what to do next.
I could have just texted him. Assumed he was Arden and told him about the transplant, begged for his mercy in the hope that our time in Siberia had meant as much to him as the poetry book suggested. But I wanted to gauge his reaction, search him for pressure points, press down on them like bruises. I didn’t want him to be able to dodge the conversation. I needed him to understand how important this was to me.
And maybe, just maybe, I wanted to see him again.
Darkness had fallen, the doorway lit neon from the garish signs above the fuel station, and I found myself missing the subtle glow of gas lamps. The twenty-first century was so gauche . Sometimes I marvelled at how far forward the world had moved – the beauty of modern medicine, and how it gave my sister a fighting chance – but other times I thought of smartphones and steel buildings and plastic-filled oceans and longed for a time long gone. Witnessing the changing trends of the last few centuries had been like experiencing the gradual pixellation of the Sistine Chapel, or da Vinci’s raw genius flattened into 16-bits, or grand orchestras stripped back to a single synthetic keyboard. Though modern sewage systems were pretty great. I didn’t miss the tide of eternal shit running down the streets of Rome.
I yanked my wandering mind back to Abergavenny.
There was only one car at the petrol pumps, and I could see its elderly owner inside buying cigarettes at the counter. The entrance to the flat was on the other side of the building to the road, so I was perfectly concealed on the doorstep.
When my third knock went unanswered, another idea came to me.
I’d learned to lock-pick during my time stealing diamonds from the royals in imperial Kenya, and even if I couldn’t remember details of that life, my hands still remembered what to do. Muscle memory, or something similar. It was a pretty useful skill, no matter who or where you were, so I made sure always to own a rudimentary toolkit with at least a skeleton key, a diamond pick and a tiny tension wrench. They were currently tucked in the back compartment of a red snakeskin purse Gracie had got me for Christmas.
If I could get inside and search Ceri’s flat, maybe I’d find the iron-clad proof I was looking for. In fact, I was sure I would. Because that’s the thing about humans – we leave traces of our souls everywhere, as unique and identifying as fingerprints.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I withdrew my lock-picking kit, scanned the petrol station one final time, and got to work.
The door to the flat had an old brass lock, scratched to within an inch of its life by an endless stream of tenants. At first my fingers fumbled, rusty and uncertain, the picks and wrenches jostling each other awkwardly, inexpertly.
But eventually I felt the gratifying click, the sighing give, and allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction.
I didn’t risk flicking a light switch inside, as I didn’t want Ceri to arrive home and spot the glow through the windows. Instead, I flipped on my phone’s stark white torch and climbed the carpeted staircase. It was littered with junk mail and takeaway menus, which struck me as odd. If he’d only moved in two days ago, how could this much unread post have accumulated? As shady as landlords were, I doubted they’d leave the place in a state like that for a new tenant.
Had I just caught him in his first lie? Had he actually been in Abergavenny for a while, biding his time until the right murderous opportunity arose?
Inside, the flat itself was almost entirely devoid of personal belongings. On the walls hung generic landscape art – which could have belonged to Arden, I supposed, but it seemed more likely to have been chosen by an estate agent to make the place look more homely. There was a grubby cream carpet, a cheap-looking grey sofa and yellow throw cushions, a low coffee table with a few tea-stained mugs scattered over it, and a single pair of off-white trainers discarded by the black television stand.
The kitchenette was tiled a grimy mustard yellow, the grouting stained a dull brown-grey. A glance inside the fridge and cupboards gave me no insights. There was just a tin of instant coffee, a bag of sugar and an unopened packet of custard creams. I didn’t know whether this pointed to Arden or not. He drank his coffee black, and there was no milk in the fridge, but the bag of sugar was incongruous. Unless, of course, it had been there when he’d moved in. Whenever that was.
After checking the bathroom, which had only hand soap, a toothbrush and paste, shampoo and a single black bath towel hanging on a rail, I slipped into the bedroom.
The double bed was neatly made with a blue-checked duvet set, and there were more generic landscape paintings hanging above it. The top drawer of his dresser was open, revealing several pairs of identical black socks with different-coloured heels. The other drawers contained jeans and sweatshirts, for the most part, and only two wrinkled shirts hung in the loose-hinged wardrobe.
The poetry book was sitting on a pine bedside table, a bus ticket sticking out of the top as a bookmark. He was less than ten pages in. That didn’t seem like the frenzied reading of an author who’d discovered a past life’s work.
I was about to give up and label the mission inconclusive when my gaze snagged on a large black object on the windowsill.
When I realized what it was, my heart lurched.
A typewriter.
Old – very old – and not very recently used, by the looks of things. There was no stack of paper next to it, no ink spools inside. The keys were a little dusty, as though it had recently been taken out of storage.
This was it. The sign I’d been looking for.
Why else would someone like Ceri have this? Why, when he had so few other belongings, would he bother to bring this typewriter from his family home? Or buy it from a junk shop, when he had so little money he was worried about rent?
The sole furnishing he had chosen for his lonely haunted house. The written word, his eternal companion, his only confidante. The image of him sitting outside the cafe with a black coffee and a newspaper … I should have known then.
An old soul.
New flowers from old roots, an eternal seed from which life will always bloom.
My hand trembled as I reached out to touch it – to close the emotional gap between us, as though this typewriter held the part of his soul he kept so hidden – but I snatched my fingers back just in time. The keys were dusty. He’d notice if they’d been touched.
Stepping back, trying to silence my roaring heart, I wracked my brain for the right course of action.
Should I get out now, before he caught me, and try to stay out of his way until after the transplant? Or should I wait it out and confront him when he returned home? Even though it had been my original plan, the latter now struck me as too risky. A fight could so easily go wrong, and I didn’t want to give him reason to kill me before I could save Gracie.
I should cut my losses. Get out. Regroup.
But as I slipped back out of the front door, a run-down old car pulled up and parked off to the side of the petrol station. A male figure climbed out, drawing a hood up over his blonde head.
Ceri.
No.
Arden.
Chest pounding painfully, I snuck around the edge of the building in the pooled shadows. Behind the petrol station was a small copse of trees, and I crept over to them as silently as I could, hiding behind a narrow trunk to watch him enter the flat.
I hadn’t relocked the door. Would he notice?
Sure enough, as he slotted his key into the lock, he paused. Frowned. Jimmied the handle.
And then he looked around, as if he knew an intruder was somewhere nearby.
Right at the spot where I was hiding.
I stayed perfectly still, hoping the darkness obscured me. My pulse was a thundering drum roll.
After several agonizing beats, he looked away again, then slipped inside.
All the fight left my limbs, and I slid to the wood-chipped ground, the bark of the tree rough against my coat.
My muscles were watery, my guts loose, and I let out an involuntary whimper.
Arden was here.
He had found me. And very soon, he was going to kill me.
So why had I wanted so badly to run into his arms?