GRAVE MATTER

NINETEEN

Using her mobile phone at an internet café we found near Kings Cross, Blanche studiously researched Mariella Novotny, the reporter of the article in the newspaper.  Fortunately, Novotny people are rare, with only a total of six of them having f*******: pages. Only one of those was a Mariella Novotny, who appeared to live in London, which was promising.  Blanche went through Mariella's page, looking at all her posted photographs and noting down the names of those who had made any comments about them. Then, she read through her profile and made a list of those people she was following.

            But was this the right Mariella Novotny?

            According to Blanche, the clincher was tucked away in her likes. 

            Way down at the bottom was the declaration of her membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain.  She also had a title as the 'Party's Chief Whip' owing to her talent for sado-masochism.

            It always amazed me how much information people put about themselves on social media.  I had never used it, and nor would I.  I would much rather talk to people face to face than see what they are doing with their lives on the internet.

            However, f*******: gave Blanche not only what Mariella Novotny looked like but also where she worked.  She was posted as a freelance journalist but based mainly on one newspaper in London.  Blanche called the newspaper at half-past one and asked to speak to Mariella Novotny.  A colleague had answered and confirmed that she was in the office that day.

            "She's nipped out to buy her lunch," the colleague had explained.

            "Will she belong?" Blanche asked.

            "I doubt it," said the colleague. "She's most likely in the deli around the corner.  Do you want to leave a message?"

            "No thanks," Blanche responded, "we'll try again later."

            We had no particular wish to talk with Mariella directly.  Not yet.

            Instead, I'd been waiting close to the front door of the newspapers offices in Fleet Street when she appeared at five twenty, turning left and hurrying towards Chancery Lane tube station.

            She was in her late twenties or early thirties, tall, slim, with white-blonde hair, sharp-angled features, and penetrating eyes, appearing just as she did in her f*******: profile photo.  She was wearing a smart suit, and she carried a black briefcase as she hurried down the steps from street level.

            As our followers had discovered earlier, it is always simpler to follow someone covertly when many people are around. So we were quickly able to track her down the crowded escalators and onto a Central Line train.  We were in the same carriage, only about three or four yards apart, but I was confident she had no idea that we were interested in her.

            Tube passengers, in general, live in their little bubble, thinking their thoughts, neither communicating with nor even noticing their fellow travellers.  It made our life so much easier.

            The only time I can ever recall it being any different was during the 2012 Olympics when everyone had a common ground between them based on what had happened the day before.

            We were able to watch her reflection in the train window, making sure that, as I couldn't her face, she couldn't see ours.

            She alighted at Holborn and then took the Piccadilly line to King's Cross, and we about three people behind her as we all rode the escalator to the mainline station.  But she was not catching a train. Instead, she walked straight across the crowded concourse and out of the station heading north on York Way.

            Here, following unobserved was much more difficult as there were fewer other people.  We crossed the road to walk parallel to her but on the far side.  She didn't once glance towards me as she hurried along, but then she too crossed over and turned right into Wharfdale Road.  We hung back a little before continuing.

            We tailed her to the far end of New Wharf Road, where she used a key to enter a bright new block of flats at number 17.  We scanned through the names next to the bell-pushes.  There was no Mariella Novotny listed, but half of the buttons had no name alongside them, or perhaps she was sharing.  Short of pushing each bell in turn, there was no telling which flat she had entered.

            "Now what?" Blanche asks with a hint of impatience.

            "We wait," I reply.

            "What?"

            "There's a pub go down the road. I'll buy you a drink."

            The c**k Tavern was reasonably quiet when we entered, and Blanche found a table by the window while I ordered a couple of drinks, and some food, preferably a light snack, she had asked.

            When I joined her at the table, it looked like we had the same drink.

            "What have you got?" She inquires, intrigued.

            "Tonic water without the gin," I say.

            As she had asked for, I handed over her gin and tonic with 'ice and a slice' and settled down on a hard chair opposite.

            "Seen anything?" I ask.

            "Not yet?"

            "What did you order?"

            "I ordered you a hot pasta of the day with a side salad and for myself a ham-and-cheese panini."

            "Sounds good."

            We sat and watched Mariella Novotny's smart new block of flats for the next ten minutes until the food came.  My panini went on a plate wrapped in a paper napkin, and Blanche's pasta and salad came in an appropriately shaped bowl. 

Without hesitating, I removed the napkin from my panini and started eating.  It tasted excellent. 

"Food's good here," I said with my mouth full.

"Yes," Blanche said, not looking up.  She only had eyes for her pasta and loaded another spoonful of penne and popped it into her mouth.  She was giving me all the body language signs that she didn't want to talk about anything at all.

That was a shame because I did.

"How are you feeling?" I ask

She looked up at me but without any smile in her eyes.  I put on my most 'stay-with-me-Blanche-I-need-you' face and hoped it might stir an interest.

"I wouldn't be doing this for anyone else but you, Justin.  You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." I laid my hand upon her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

She stared deep into my eyes, and I looked right back at her.

We ate in silence for a moment, and then something caught my eye. "She's on the move."

"I haven't finished yet," Blanche pleaded.

"I want you to follow her."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to take a look at her flat."

"Are you mad?" She says between gritted teeth.

"Probably," I say, smiling.

"But how do I get in contact with you?"

"I'll meet you back at my place at eleven o'clock tonight."

I watched Blanche leave and waited for another hour in the pub to make sure the coast was clear, probably becoming the slowest drinker in there.

Finally, I left, returning my glass to the bar and thanking the busty girl behind the bar.

It had started to rain as I crossed the road, giving the tarmac and pavement a wet sheen.  I had to work out which flat Mariella Novotny would be difficult as her name wasn't on any of the bell-pushes.

I'm sure I could find an excuse or make an argument for what I'm about to do, but whatever way you dress it up, it's still breaking the law: a half-brick, a tea-towel.  The pane of glass shatters and fall inwards.  So far, it's vandalism or criminal damage.  I reached inside and unlocked the door.  Now it's an illegal entry.  If I find anything, it's going to be theft.  Is this what they mean by the slippery slope.

It's after half-past ten.  After leaving the pub, I had nipped to one of those all-night mini-supermarkets, where I bought a large roll of black plastic, some duct tape and a torch.  I paid with cash, so it was untraceable, and I kept my back to the security camera at all times.

I find myself in a hallway, and glass crunched under my sneakers—a red-light blinks on a motion sensor. I did not move once I realized that I need to bypass a sensor. Evaluating the area first is beneficial to understanding the environment around the sensor and determining what paths I could take to avoid it.

I looked for the location of any other motion sensors around me. Sensors are usually placed on ceilings or directly across from each other to cover a larger area. Once I knew the location, I determined a possible path around their field of vision.

Before proceeding forward, I moved slowly along the walls where the sensors were located and as low as possible. Many motion sensors have blind spots that make it difficult to detect movement directly underneath them. I was aware that another sensor could be pointing in my direction from the other side of the hallway.

Now down on my knees, I crawled through any open spaces or in front of big pieces of furniture. The manufacturers generally calibrate motion detectors to make them pet-friendly, so I tried to stay as low as the average dog while moving along the hallway. In addition, commonly configured motion detectors allow animals to move freely throughout the house without setting off any alarms.

The flats had the names of the occupants on the doors, but Mariella Novotny's name was not on any of the doors of the apartments on the ground floor.

I climb the stairs and find Novotny's flat on the second floor.  The door was unlocked, which immediately puts me on my guard.

I pushed open the door and found myself looking down the barrel of a gun.  The hand that held the gun was the steadiest gun I had ever seen.  It was motionless.  In the corner of the room, the tall cut-glass lamp offered some diffused light in the darkness, but the hand was evident.  Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. 

Beyond the pool of light, I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the wall, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes.

Very slowly, very steadily, I raised both hands, palms outward, until they were level with my shoulders.  It was probably a pretty extra precaution as the person behind that immobile gun didn't seem to have any nerves, and the last thought I had in my head was that of resistance.

The person with the gun said nothing and did nothing, remaining completely still.  I could see the white blur of teeth now.  The gleaming eyes stared unwinkingly at me.  The smile, the head c****d slightly to one side, the negligent relaxation of the body, and the aura in that room of a brooding and sardonic menace was so heavy as to be almost palpable.  There was something evil, frighteningly unnatural and wrong and foreboding in the person's stillness and cold-blooded cat-and-mouse indifference.  Death was waiting to reach out and touch with his icy forefinger in that room.

I could smell death in the air.

The barrel hadn't followed me as I'd moved across the flat; it was still pointing rigidly at the spot where I'd been standing ten seconds earlier.

I moved fast, going for that gun-hand, but it was no breakneck dive.  I didn't; I was almost inevitable, even have to move fast.  The hand that had looked like marble felt like marble, only colder. I'd smelled death all right.  I checked that the curtains were closed, shut the door noiselessly, locked it quietly and switched on the overhead light.

Rigour mortis kept Mariella Novotny in that position, but she should have slipped to the floor or at least slumped to the floor before rigour mortis had set in.

There were no outward signs of violence that I could see but on the assumption that it would be stretching the arm of coincidence a bit far to assume that she had succumbed from natural causes.

I tried to pull her upright, but she wouldn't budge. So I tried harder, I heard the sound of cloth ripping, then suddenly she was upright, and I saw what had kept her in that fixed position. 

A time bomb!

The type of detonation triggered by a timer with the explosive charge is the main component of any bomb and makes up most of its size and weight. It is the damaging element of the bomb, manufactured as part of the device, the timing mechanism, and it can be programmed to count up or count down.

And this one was counting down.

Fast.

The flat seemed to evaporate into darkness as the shock wave lifted ger off her feet and flung me against the hallway wall.  I lay on my side, more or less conscious, winded, but weirdly calm.  The room was dark with dust.  After a while, I became aware of a breeze and something flapping in the gloom beside her.  I put out her hand and touched the carpet, and felt glass beneath my fingers.  Behind the shattered window, the curtains stirred.  Somewhere outside, a woman was screaming.  Every few seconds came the crash of falling masonry.  I could smell the odour of gas.

I struggled to sit up.  The room was in a kind of twilight.  Particles of pulverized brick and plaster swirled in the grey shaft of light from the gaping window.  Unfamiliar shapes shadowed and askew.  A jagged c***k ran from floor to ceiling above the armchair where Mariella Novotny had sat.   I took a deep breath to gather my strength and sucked in the dust. Then, coughing, I grabbed one of the curtains, hauled myself to my feet and stumbled through the debris towards the door. 

The sound of fire engines sounded nearby as I picked my way out into the hallway, the thick carpet buried under plaster.  The gas smell was worse here, and the floor seemed tilted. 

I unlocked the front door of the flat, turned the handle, and pulled. At first, it wouldn't open.  I had to drag it free from its twisted frame and then let out a cry as I found myself swaying on the edge of a twenty-foot drop.  The landing and the exterior wall of the block of flats had gone.  There was nothing between me and the shell of the tall building across the street, its windows gaping, its roof collapsed.  In the road immediately beneath my feet, a landslide of rubble tumbled into the road, bricks, pipes, and fragments of furniture.  Smoke rose from a dozen small fires.

Two fire engines pulled up, accompanied by ambulances and the police.  The fire crews started unrolling hoses in the middle of what looked like the aftermath of a battle.  Bloodied dust-covered victims lying full-length, others sitting dazed, heads bowed. 

Two bodies had already been set apart and shrouded, with spectators gawping.  I gripped the door frame and leaned out as far as I dared, knowing that I had sent Blanche after the killer.