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  Isolation

  Neil Randall

  Copyright © 2017 by Neil Randall

  Editor: Crooked Cat

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

  without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat 2017

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  For my parents

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone at Crooked Cat Books for all their hard work in making this book possible. Special thanks goes to my editor Laurence Patterson whose invaluable advice helped make Isolation the dynamite read it is today. I would also like to thank my family and friends for all their support and encouragement over the years.

  In terms of background reading and research for Isolation, I am indebted to Tom Mulch's Choctaw Tales and Angie Debo's A History of the Indians of the United States for providing me with an insight into the folkloric tales which I reference in the book.

  Finally, I would like to offer thanks to all my writer friends who read early drafts of the novel, making invaluable suggestions along the way. Without your help, I would never have got the book off the ground.

  About the Author

  Novelist, short story writer and poet, Neil Randall was born in Norfolk, England, in 1975. A keen sportsman, Randall represented his county at football throughout his school and college years, and had trials with several leading English club sides. After attending an elite sport’s college, Randall went on to read law at the University of East London. During a gap year he travelled extensively across Central and Eastern Europe and into Russia, places which provide the backdrop for much of his early published work.

  He is heavily influenced by classic authors such as Hubert Selby Jnr, John Cheever and Raymond Carver as well as contemporary writers such as Haruki Murakami, Olga Grushin and Paul Auster. He wants to write bizarre compelling stories about normal everyday people and situations, where the reader doesn't know what's coming on the next page.

  His shorter fiction and poetry has been published in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada.

  Samples of his writing can be viewed at www.neilrandall.net and narandall.blogspot.com

  Isolation

  Chapter One

  Monday Morning

  As soon as I got to the office I started sorting through the usual correspondence, the interdepartmental reports and agenda updates, circulars from neighbouring borough councils, junk mail from stationery suppliers, letters from MPs, councillors, and disgruntled members of the public. While checking for anything of importance, anything that might require urgent attention, I noticed a slim, plain-white envelope, a very large, unusual envelope, different from the ones I was used to sifting through each morning. To my surprise (despite eight years’ continuous service, mine was still a relatively junior position), it had been marked for my attention. F.A.O. Nigel Barrowman read the top line of the label, printed in an elegant font – Cambria, I think.

  Intrigued, I carefully unsealed the envelope and slid out the contents: a glossy colour photograph, enlarged, of what looked like a luxury hotel room, a room in complete disarray – huge amounts of blood spattered up against the walls, crumpled sheets strewn across the floor, lamps and period furniture overturned, thick drapes torn from curtain rails, a battered crystal chandelier hanging precariously from the ceiling, a dressing-table with a smashed mirror. Most disturbingly of all, on a vast king-sized bed, there lay two bloodied corpses, both young women, white, with tousled, jet-black hair covering their faces, arms splayed at corresponding angles (in what I could only describe as inverted crucifixion poses), naked bodies showcasing a truly sickening array of deep, jagged stab wounds, each woman had a breast sliced off, and a series of intersecting lacerations cut into the stomach which looked to be identical, as if whoever had perpetrated the grisly murders had taken the time to make intricate incisions, like a carver cutting patterns into wood, leaving, perhaps, some kind of message or symbol.

  “What?” I picked up the envelope and checked the postmark: London. I turned the photograph over. A date – 06/11/95 – Saturday had been printed on the back. Again, I scrutinised the photograph. Surely it was a prank, a photo-shopped image, a bad taste joke. But the more I studied the scene, the more authentic it appeared. There were no tell-tale signs of cutting or pasting or splicing or smudging or airbrushing. Everything looked natural – well, as natural as a brutal double murder could look, I suppose. And that’s when it struck me. If the photograph was genuine, then why had someone sent it to me, why had the envelope been marked for my attention?

  The door swung open, making me jump.

  “Morning, Nige.” My line-manager, Michael, walked into the room. “Good weekend? God, I’m hung-over. Can’t take it like I used to. Anything pressing come up? Anything I need to deal with right now?”

  “No, no. Only we did receive a rather strange photograph in the post this morning.”

  “Photograph?” He yawned and rolled his neck. “What kind of photograph?”

  “This.” I held it up for his perusal. “It was amongst the normal post, marked for my attention.”

  Michael’s handsome, if slightly stubbly, red-eyed face contorted into a worried, disturbed grimace.

  “Huh?” He took the picture and studied it at close quarters. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “That’s what I thought. But the more I looked at it, the more it seemed, erm…genuine.”

  “I – I don’t know what to say, Nige. This is Ilford, Essex, the Risk and Assessment section of the District Council, not an episode of Columbo.”

  “So what do you think I should do about it, then?”

  “Ignore it. Throw it away. It’s probably Justin from Street Works, another one of his pranks, a bloody wind-up. You know what a whizz he is when it comes to computers.”

  He handed the photograph back.

  “Throw it away?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure he’ll own up before the day’s out. And say, Nige, you don’t mind holding the fort for a bit, do you? I’ve got to go straight back out again, got, erm…site meetings, a full diary.” A euphemism he often used when taking the rest of the day off. “And if I don’t get a strong coffee and a bacon sandwich inside me, I’ll be no good to anyone.”

  “But I’ve got an appraisal with Mr Mackintosh this afternoon.”

  “Oh shit, erm…can’t be helped,” he said reaching for the door handle. “Get the girls on reception to redirect all calls. Catch you later.”

  “No, no, Ms Braithwaite,” I said, switching the telephone from right hand to left, “you can’t make a claim against the authority for loss of earnings in this case. Our maintenance section is undertaking essential works to the public highway. We have a duty to ensure that all necessary repair work is, well, if you feel that strongly, then I advise you to put the matter to us in writing. Then you—”

  She slammed the phone down.

  “That’s right, Mr Shepherdson,
if you put your claim in writing and send it to the address I just gave you, marked for the attention of Michael Oliver, we’ll look into the matter and get back to you. No, you can’t just give me the details over the telephone. I know it would save a lot of time and effort, and I really am sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s procedure. If you want to—”

  He slammed the phone down.

  “That’s not quite the case, Mr Collings. As we outlined in our original letter, the overhanging hedge is on private land. Therefore, if you want to pursue a personal injury claim, you will have to contact the landowner in question. Well, sir, I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t think there’s any need for that kind of language. No. I—”

  He slammed the phone down.

  “So, Nigel,” said Mr Mackintosh, Area Coordinator, a severe, craggy-faced man in his late fifties, “where do you see yourself in the next ten to fifteen years?”

  “Erm, well, ideally I’d like to continue working in the Risk and Assessment section, adding to my skill base, helping to provide a better standard of customer care.” I trailed off having repeated, almost verbatim, the contents of the last set of council directives.

  Mackintosh looked me over, in the way a scientist would examine a rare but ultimately useless organism under a microscope.

  “I’ve always admired your dedication – in early, last to leave, rarely if ever sick, monthly reports always delivered to your superiors on time.” He gave me that same appraising look again. “Remember, Nigel, not just anyone can work in the public sector. In many ways you were handpicked for your position here. And full-time contracts will soon become a thing of the past.”

  This only served to unnerve me. In eight years, I’d never heard this scowling, perennially agitated man utter a complimentary word about anyone.

  “Granted, you may not be destined for a managerial role, but if you continue to perform in an adequate manner, you’ll receive all the benefits associated with a long career in local government.”

  Just as I was about to leave off for the day, the telephone started to ring.

  “Risk and Assessment. How can I help?”

  There was a brief pause, what I could only describe as a rustling sound, before a man, whose tone was far too sinister and staged to believe, said:

  “Find anything interesting in the post this morning? Don’t worry, Nigel. Plenty more where that came from. This is just the beginning.” He slammed the phone down.

  “What?”

  Whether this was just another part of the prank, the next stage of a distasteful wind-up, Justin’s idea of seeing a joke through to the end, I didn’t know. Nonetheless I decided to rescue the photograph from the rubbish bin, to keep it as evidence, just in case, to slip it inside my desk drawer, locking it away somewhere safe overnight.

  Chapter Two

  A trip to the big Sainsbury’s in Ilford always filled me with dread. Thoughts of bustling aisles crammed with snarling, sniping shoppers arguing over what they should have for their tea, the price of toilet rolls or baked beans, trolleys being pushed around like demented dodgems, the harsh overhead lighting, customer service announcements crackling through overhead speakers, the incessant bleep-bleep from the check-outs, young mum’s manhandling rowdy kids, the queues, the smells of the fish and meat counters, the freshly baked bread, the changes in temperature never failed to unsettle me, inducing something close to one of my old debilitating panic attacks.

  Picking up a basket from a stack by the automatic doors, I walked inside the store. Living alone, I tended to buy lots of frozen food, meals-for-one, pizzas, chicken kievs, things I could shove into the oven; things which took little or no preparation time, bar tearing open a cardboard box and piercing the plastic packaging. In theory, therefore, my visits to Sainsbury’s should’ve been relatively painless affairs. Regardless, I always seemed to stumble into an irritating nightmare scenario: a security guard getting into a fist-fight with a shoplifter, an item that wouldn’t scan through the check-out properly, precipitating a long delay, interaction with people I found as disconcerting as I did absurd.

  Only today, something even stranger happened. Halfway up the dairy aisle, a roly-poly woman didn’t so much as slip over as throw herself, swallow-dive fashion to the floor, right by a Caution Slippery sign, in a blatant and pretty unspectacular attempt to get some kind of personal injury compensation (and I say unspectacular because she did barely more than slump down on her front). So pathetically transparent was her effort, not one of the many shoppers pushing trolleys up and down the aisle paid her any mind. In fact, no-one, me included, went over and asked if she was okay, if she needed any help. No-one called for a member of staff. We just stepped over her body as she writhed around, moaning and groaning, and carried on our shopping as normal.

  The same girl who served me last Friday after work was at the check-out, very pretty, early twenties, with delicate features and soft brown eyes. Last week she asked me lots of questions – “You out on the town tonight?” “Anything nice planned for the weekend?” – things that sounded a little odd and out of place, but things I felt obliged to answer. When I got home and checked my receipt I noticed that many of the things I’d put through the check-out hadn’t been scanned, so I hadn’t been charged for them.

  “Back again?” She smiled, picked up my frozen pizza and scanned it through the till.

  “Yeah.” I looked at her name-tag: Liz Green.

  “Another Monday, another week in the grind.”

  “They tend to come around quick, don’t they?”

  It was then I noticed (and it wasn’t something I would’ve been aware of had it not been for last Friday, such was the unceasing volley of bleeps sounding all around me) that Liz was passing my items over the scanner rather than through it. When my shop was totalled up, she only asked for one-pound ninety-nine, the cost of the pizza.

  I reached for my wallet, hesitated, was about to say something, but Liz spoke first:

  “You know, when a girl does something this stupid to catch a fella’s eye, he should really ask her out for a drink.”

  A wobbly-voiced customer service announcement crackled out of the speakers:

  “This week only, one-litre bottles of Robinson’s Orange Barely Water – buy one, get one free.”

  A woman behind me said, “Are you gonna pay for that lot, mate? Other people want to get on, eh?”

  I apologised, handed Liz a five-pound note, and shoved my shopping into a carrier bag. When she gave me the change, I was so flustered, so taken aback, I didn’t get a chance to say anything to her, so quickly had she started scanning the next customer’s shopping, and I found myself shunted away from the check-out, narrowly avoiding a collision with two trolleys.

  Back at my modest one-bedroom flat, the top half of an old terraced house that had been knocked into two, I put the shopping away, turned on the oven, and slid my pepperoni pizza inside – gas mark seven, twenty-two minutes. Still a little perplexed by the scene at the supermarket, I walked through to the front room, picked up the remote control and switched on the television, catching the regional news headlines.

  “Two unidentified women have been found brutally murdered in a central London hotel room.”

  Giving a start, I stared at a still photograph of the same murder scene I’d studied earlier this morning, the exact same luxury hotel room, the exact same bloodstains spattered up against the walls, chandelier dangling from the ceiling, overturned furniture and cracked mirror. The only thing missing was the two corpses on the bed.

  Deeply disturbed, I slumped down on the settee. I didn’t know what to do. Should I call the police? Perhaps ring Michael on his out of hours work phone? Anyone better equipped to deal with the situation than me, anyone who could act in a reasonable, considered manner.

  In the end, after pacing up and down the flat, I went through to my bedroom, switched on my computer, accessed the internet, and typed in the BBC’s web address.

  There it was, the headline
on the homepage:

  TWO WOMEN HORRIFICALLY MURDERED IN LONDON HOTEL ROOM

  The details were a little sketchy. Evidently the bodies had only just been discovered: one of the cleaning staff raised the alarm when she couldn’t open the door. As the newsreader had reported, the two young women had yet to be officially identified. The police were now appealing for guests at the hotel over the weekend to come forward with any information. Under the headline was the same photograph of the crime scene I’d seen on the news bulletin. It was the same room featured in the picture I’d received this morning – it was identical, there was no doubt.

  Chapter Three

  Next morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, agonizing over what to do, I went to the local police station to tell them everything I knew.

  “Good morning,” said a rangy young duty officer. “How can I help?”

  I gulped back some saliva, not quite knowing how to broach such a potentially serious matter without coming across as some sort of crackpot.

  “Erm, well, look, I know this is going to sound rather odd, but I think I may have some important information, well, not information as such, but evidence, regarding the hotel room killing, the double murder reported on the news yesterday.”

  “Oh, right.” He hesitated and blinked his eyes, as if unsure of how to deal with such a weighty situation. “I’ll, erm…just call through to a senior officer.”

  About a quarter of an hour later, Detective Inspector Kendrick, a slightly haggard-looking man of middle age and medium height, with big bags under his filmy eyes, came out of a back room to meet me.