CHAPTER ONE
Dom Tenby pressed mute, his work papers
spread over his lap and sofa like a white patchwork blanket. Something bad was
happening over the corridor in apartment twenty-two.
This was the third night in a row his
attempts to get some work done at home had been ruined by the couple who lived there.
He wasn’t in the mood for them tonight, hadn’t been the previous two. But at
least then the noise had stopped after a few minutes. Tonight, Tenby was
convinced that one, if not both of them, had been seriously hurt.
Ever since he first saw them, not long after
he’d moved into the apartment across the corridor with his girlfriend of the
time, whose name he couldn’t bring himself to remember, he thought they made a
strange pair. It was an opinion he couldn’t shake. They were both in their
forties, Tenby estimated. She blonde and doll-like, probably attractive back in
the day, but now layered too thickly with make-up that was slapped-on to
cover-up the cruelty of years. As for him, the husband, partner, whatever his
relationship to her was, his hair was blatantly twenty years younger than the
rest of him, dyed an oily black and styled to cover up the brutal, shiny
scalped truth that he was receding. They spent most of their weekdays at home,
from what Tenby could gather, leaving together at just gone six most nights, not
returning until late, usually after Tenby had called it a day.
But three nights ago, that all changed.
Tenby heard crockery smashing first. Didn’t
think much of it. Everyone drops a bowl or plate now and again. But seven,
eight in one night? The multiple smashes were followed by dull, inexplicable
thuds. Then silence.
The second night, last night, the soundwaves
of a fully fledged shouting match carried through the walls of the Byron Close
apartment block, shuddering across the neat, white walled, real oak floored
corridor. The shouting ended with her screaming where he could stick something
(Tenby didn’t catch exactly what or where, but imagined it would be painful).
He certainly heard the echo of the front door slamming, a sound that disturbed
his train of thought to such an extent, he was forced to abandon his work for
the night.
And then there was tonight, the crescendo. Apartment
twenty-two played host to scrapes, thuds, yells, bangs and crashes, intercut
with him shouting and her screaming, then her shouting and him screaming. Tenby
couldn’t quite make out details, much to his annoyance, even after he’d pressed
mute, lowered his breathing and leant toward the door.
As he listened, a yell sent Tenby’s heart
racing. Was that her or him? He stood up, letting his work papers slide off him
like slates off a roof in high wind. What was going on over there? He pictured
one savagely attacking the other, inflicting merciless hits around the head with
a laptop, an iron, a toaster, a trouser press (his neighbour looked like the
kind of guy who’d have a trouser press).
Tenby’s remote slipped from his grasp as he
contemplated the gravity of the situation - a serious assault happening across
the corridor and he was sitting there, listening to it happen.
Pangs of nervousness infected a stomach that
had been over-fed and under-nourished by too frequent eating of the wrong kind
of food over a Christmas break that had been curtailed by a call from his boss
demanding he go into the office the day after New Year’s Day.
He slipped on novelty crocodile slippers that
had been a ‘surprise’ present from his parents and edged open his front door. He
looked left down the corridor, hoping someone else would be peering out of their
apartment or stepping out of the lift.
He was out of luck on both counts. His
neighbours were either out or out for the count.
He glanced across to number twenty-two. His
apartment door was definitely the nearest. Twenty three was four, maybe five
feet further down the corridor. Tenby reckoned that rendered him honour-bound
to be the first to intervene. The no-show of his other neighbours suggested they
agreed.
After cursing his choice of apartment and checking
he had his keys, he crept toward twenty-two.
As he approached the door, the great slab of
wood rattled in its frame, the sound of splintering ripping from inside the
apartment.
Tenby rocked back on his heels. That noise
had to be something sharp embedding itself in the other side of the door.
Something like a…
Tenby battled the urge to run back inside his
own apartment, double-lock the door, don his Plattan headphones and pretend
he’d been asleep all evening.
His heart was racing, his conscience
clouding. He had to find out what was going on before he found out about it on
the local news.
Tenby clenched his fist and reached toward
the door.
Before he had a chance to knock, the handle
moved.
Tenby froze, unable to comprehend why he was
still standing there and not running away.
As it slowly opened, a hand reached around
the door. Tenby stifled a laugh when he saw blood trickling between its
shuddering fingers. This had to be a set-up. Some kind of drunken party game.
Come on you guys, the joke’s over. The hand was followed by a forearm with
blood streaming up to the elbow and dripping onto the corridor floor.
Tenby would have yelled for help right there
and then, had whoever the arm belonged to not tried to do exactly that, choking
on a throat thick with blood and vomit.
As Tenby leaned to his left to get a better
angle on the owner of the bloodied arm, the door flung open. Tenby’s neighbour
stooped in the doorway, the handles of five ornate daggers protruding from his midriff.
He didn’t know why, but Tenby quickly counted them all. The lion’s share of the
blood that was leaking onto the floor was being generated by a gaping wound in the
lower abdomen, from which Tenby assumed the victim had recently pulled a sixth blade.
As he reached out to help, Tenby was forced
back by a flash of brilliant white light from within the apartment, accompanied
by a soft ‘phut’, too weak to be a gunshot, more akin to a tame firework.
Tenby squinted, temporarily blinded by the
dazzle.
He heard footsteps, charging toward him.
‘Who is it?’
Still blind, he stood helpless, expecting a
knife or six to slice into him.
As he held his breath and waited for the
inevitable, Tenby felt someone brush past him, a waft of cool, fragrant air.
‘Hello,’ he called out.
No answer.
As he blinked his eyes out of their blindness,
Tenby saw his multi-wounded neighbour cowering next to him, the daggers making
him look like a macabre hairbrush.
‘Somebody help!’ Tenby shouted.
