Vampire "Unseen" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 2) (18 page)

----- X -----

Corneliu sat at an oak kitchen table with Sue Lynch and two other girls, Eliza, an Australian wearing the most colourful homemade clothing imaginable and a nondescript quiet girl called Jacqueline. They were all in their early twenties and all shared this home along with their missing friend, Nisha.

“We know that Nisha got off the bus at the end of the street at the right time on Tuesday,” Sue was saying. “She left work and travelled home. She bought cigarettes from the store on the corner of the street the same as she does every night. It is literally on the corner, but somehow she never made it home. We know the men who own the local shop and they said they saw her the same as they see her every day. She just didn’t arrive here and didn’t go to work the next day.”

Cornel was writing this down. “And when did you report this to the police?”

“Last night,” Jacqueline said quietly. “We work together, not together, but at the same place. We sell internet advertising. When she didn’t come home I thought she might have met someone and stayed out. When she wasn’t at work yesterday morning I tried to call her. When I came home last night I asked the guys in the local shop if they’d seen her.”

“Let me get the time right. Nisha is seen in the shop on Tuesday night. The next evening you called the police to report her missing. So she’s been missing now for two days.”

“Yes,” Jacqueline said.

“And the guys in the shop are certain of the day, they couldn’t be mistaken?”

“They’re certain they saw Nisha, yes.”

“They’re Hindu’s,” Eliza added with the twang of an Australian accent. “They’re really nice guys... they wear turbans.”

Corneliu made a thin smile. “If they saw her they are probably the last people to see her.”

“We know she went to work and we’re pretty certain she travelled home as far as the end of the street,” Sue Lynch reiterated. “She only had to walk the length of the road, but she vanished. Her mobile phone is not answering and she missed work yesterday and today. I reported her missing at the police station on Oxbridge Road.”

“What did the police say?”

“They didn’t say anything. They took a description of her, what she was wearing and some details about... Nothing. They’ve done nothing. I’m struggling to understand why a Romanian policeman is here before the British police?”

Latis nodded gently. “I can imagine your worry. There will be things happening right now behind the scenes to find Nisha, but unless the police need more information from you they will be concentrating their efforts on finding her rather than keeping you informed.”

“Why are you here?” Eliza asked.

“I have my own missing person. A young man Nisha knew called Paul McGovern.”

There was a collective surge of output from around the table. Eliza scoffed, Jacqueline put her hand to her mouth and Sue Lynch shook her head.

“I see you know him,” Latis said.

“Yeah,” Eliza blurted with a hint of aggression.

“No,” Sue Lynch said. “None of us know him, but we know about him from Nisha.”

“He got her drunk and forced her to have sex with him,” Eliza blurted.

“No,” Sue Lynch said again. Cornel had his pen poised over the notebook waiting to see what he should be writing.

“Nisha...” Sue frowned as she searched for the words. “Sometimes she...”

“She makes dramas,” Jacqueline whispered softly.

“Exactly,” Sue added. “That’s exactly what she does. She makes dramas. If she meets a man she likes and he doesn’t call then we all have to suffer as she cries and needs attention.”

“Is that what happened with McGovern?”

“No. Nisha got really drunk and embarrassed herself. She’d just broken up with a boyfriend and was on the rebound. She and I were at a party...”

“James Donovan’s party?”

“Yes... How did you know that?... So we’re at this party and this guy in a Halloween mask comes up to Nisha and within a minute she dragged him upstairs. The next day I told her off for being so loose. She was cool with everything that had happened until I gave her a hard time for it and she started shifting the blame onto him. Later on this guy, McGovern, whose name she had even forgotten by that time, called up to talk to her and she tried to claim that he forced her into sex. She was shouting at him about how he had taken advantage of her in a drunken state. When she started telling us the story she salted the tale with the drama of how he coerced her and took advantage of her drunkenness, then the next time she told the story he positively forced her, then he was ripping her clothes off by the third time, then it was outright rape. Every time she told the story it got bigger.”

“She makes dramas,” Jacqueline reiterated. Sue motioned with her palm for Cornel to take heed of what Jacqueline was saying. “She’s done it a few times. Makes dramas out of her own mistakes.”

“And that is Paul McGovern,” Sue said. “I only saw him without his Halloween mask for a minute or two. I’ve never spoken to him.”

“You don’t know him any more than that?”

Sue shook her head. “The only reason we know his name is because Nisha shouted it so many times.”

“Until she met Steven,” Jacqueline added.

“That’s right,” Sue said. “A week later she met a new boyfriend and forgot all about the drunken rape drama.”

----- X -----

Corneliu was in a taxi heading back to the hotel. The day had ended. The friends of Nisha were a bust. They’d given him a description of her clothes; a light mackintosh style raincoat and a signature purple beret that she always wore. Other than that there was nothing to go on but still the name was teasing a connection in his mind of some kind.

He took his phone and called Noica.

“Buna seara, eu sunt Detectiv Latis.” He rubbed his eyes with thumb and finger as he spoke to the lady answering the phone. “Pot vorbi cu Lucian Noica?”

He waited.

Waited.

Wait.

“Corneliu? It’s Lucian, how are things?”

“A slow day today. But the reason I’m calling is something is bugging me and I can’t understand why. There’s a girl gone missing in London, her name is Nisha Khumari and...”

“Nisha!” Noica’s voice almost exploded down the telephone when he said her name.

Latis sat up straight, alert. “Why do I know her name?”

“Fuck Nisha, kill the bitch! - It was something scrawled onto the pages McGovern had on his apartment wall. You know in all of those notes he had...”

“Oh, FUCK!” Latis felt the vague connection solidify and smash him in the face. It was in the crime book. Photographs of McGovern’s Romanian apartment. Notes on paper, pinned to one of the walls. The slogan ‘Fuck Nisha, Kill the bitch!’ had been scratched so angrily the pen had gone through the paper to damage the plaster of the wall underneath. McGovern’s notes were mostly neat but this was angry and scratched. It stood out.

Fuck Nisha.

Kill the bitch!

It was photographed and in the crime book. He’d seen it a hundred times. That was why her name was standing out.

“Lucian, I’ve got to go. I’ll call back later.” He ended the call and dialled Blackwell.

“D.C.I. Blackwell.” The phone manner was formal.

“Peter, this is Corneliu Latis. I’ve just uncovered something you need to know. There’s a missing girl in West London called Nisha Khumari. She’s been missing for a few days and was reported missing to the police station on...” he checked his notes. “Oxbridge Road in Shepherds Bush... When Paul McGovern was in Romania he wrote ‘Fuck Nisha. Kill the bitch,’ on his living room wall. I’ve just spoken to this girl’s housemates and they confirm a link between her and McGovern... they were sexual partners for a one-nighter, but there appears to be animosity there.”

“Let me paraphrase that,” Blackwell said. “McGovern wrote on his living room wall a threat to kill a girl called Nisha.”

“That is correct.”

“You uncovered an old girlfriend of his called Nisha and she is reported missing, is that correct?”

“It is, yes.”

“OK, I’ll get the details from Shepherds Bush and we’ll work that angle as a priority. There is something to update you with. One of the ISP’s has already searched their records and is telling us that up until a few weeks ago, the MAC address of McGovern’s laptop was connecting to the internet through a pub in King’s Cross called The Talbot. I’ve emailed the server data we’re allowed to share to you. His last connection was a few weeks ago, but providing it was him using the computer we might be able to find out what he was doing from the server logs.”

“He was connecting through a pub? Was he staying there?”

“No. I don’t think so. They have free Wi-Fi so he may have just used it for a free internet connection. But at least we know where he might have been.”

Latis felt a surge of excitement. He was supposed to be doing background research but suddenly the noose was closing around Paul McGovern. The hunt was on.

----- X -----

Paul left the lights off as he entered the squat. His eyesight had improved of late. Crystal clarity, especially in dimly lit places. There was moonlight coming through the kitchen window, rain streaking down the glass, the pitter-patter sound of water hitting puddles outside.

There was no sound from the basement.

He took off his overcoat, folded it and placed it on the draining board next to Nisha’s clothes. He ran his fingers through his beard and pushed his hair back, feeling the water that had soaked in. His fingers trembled slightly as he placed the key into the padlock at the top of the stairs.

Control.

Don’t behave like a madman.

It didn’t work, his fingers still trembled slightly; it felt more like he was jacked up on caffeine. His heart fluttered and his fingers shook. Excitement.

He unlocked the padlock and descended the stairs quietly. The lower door was in dead blackness save for the thinnest peach light coming under the door. He found the padlock easily, part by touch and part by imagined vision. It was like he could see the lock even though he knew he shouldn’t be able to. Stranger still he could sense the position that Nisha was in through the walls. A sixth sense of detecting her form.

As he pushed the door open he heard the sound of chains coiling. Nisha was in the far corner, exactly where he had imagined. She had her knees to her chest and the blanket pulled around her. Even under the dim glow of the night-light he could see that she looked ill, her face gaunt and shallow. There was a strange smell to the basement he’d not noticed before. Something organic and rotten, a mild scent of decaying vegetables. She didn’t speak or make any sound other than to pull tighter into the corner jangling the chains.

Paul took hold of the chain that went through the ceiling eyebolt and started pulling but Nisha quickly moved with it, dropping the blanket and positioning herself under the ceiling bracket before he could drag her there by the noose.

“Please don’t hurt me... I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I won’t fight or resist. But please don’t hurt me.”

Her voice was borderline tearful. The words sounded rehearsed. Paul scrutinised her for a second. She’d sat here for a day, stewing, festering, feeling the slices to her hands. She knew what he could do, she knew she was powerless. It was her only bargaining chip. Don’t hurt me and I’ll do whatever you want. If only she realised her only purpose left was to give him pleasure as she died.

“You’ll do anything?” Paul asked.

Nisha nodded.

He slowly took hold of the knives against his chest, popped the holding studs and gently withdrew the blades.

“You’ll do anything?” He asked again.

She sobbed. Her eyes stayed on the knives but became waterfalls as she screwed up her face. Her forearms raised to cover her breasts, she tucked her fists below her chin and stuck her bottom out behind to try and conceal herself. “Please don’t hurt me!” She cried it out as a terrified screech. “Please... please don’t hurt me... don’t hurt me... I’ll do anything.” She wailed and wailed, then dropped to her knees, the chain making a clinking sound as it dragged back through the eyebolt. She clasped her hands in prayer, looking up at him, imploring, begging, praying for safety. “Please don’t hurt me...”

Paul felt himself wanting to grin widely but managed to fight it down. The corners of his lips turned up in a thin smile. The poor stupid girl. He hadn’t done anything yet, but she had worked herself into a state of emotional jelly, wailing and blithering with prayer and pleas.

“Get on the mattress. Lay on your back.”

Nisha complied instantly, loping across the basement, the chains dragging behind her. She assumed the position. Her hands were by her sides, clenched in fists. Her body shook uncontrollably and her breathing became pants and gasps.

Paul rested the knives by his feet and slipped the yoke off his shoulders. He crouched and unfastened his boots. He stood them together by the door. He slipped off his socks, rolled them and placed them inside one of the boots. He watched Nisha as he unbuttoned his shirt. She was staring at the ceiling, intermittently opening her eyes, then squeezing them closed, then opening them again. Tears were pouring from the corner of her eyes and over her cheeks but she wasn’t making noise. Paul continued to undress, folding his shirt carefully then removing his trousers, then his shorts, all of which were folded into a neat pile of garments.

He was naked.

He took hold of his knives.

His penis was erect already.

The anticipation, the boldness, the decision to do all of this had been empowering and he felt stronger at this point than at any moment before in his life. Strong, fast, clever, capable.

He took slow steps to Nisha and she clamped her eyes closed when she realised he was naked. Her little fists were tight against her hips and Paul stepped across to straddle her, then lowered to his knees, pinching her arms against her flank, putting his weight on her stomach, resting his balls on her sternum.

“Open your eyes, Nisha.”

She did. She wailed. His cock stood off her skin but was aligned between her breasts, his hands held two knives, he had her arms locked with his thighs. “Please... don’t.... don’t....” she mumbled before turning her head to the side and clasping her eyes closed again.