Will stood on the pavement outside the hospital, his mind numb.
Beside him, a toddler chattered away excitedly to her mother who sat on a bench under the bus shelter, half listening to her child while she sent texts and checked messages on her mobile phone, a cigarette hanging from her lips.
Behind the bus shelter, the Accident and Emergency department of the hospital remained busy, its doors opening and closing as regularly as clockwork, ambulances delivering a steady stream of casualties from the busy weekday city. Voices wafted across the breeze to where Will swayed with his thoughts, broken only by the sound of the bus as it braked to a halt, the doors hissing open.
Will stood to the side, letting the mother and toddler onto the bus before him, and then made his way to the empty rear of the vehicle. He slid onto a seat nearest a window, pulled his backpack onto his lap and rested his head against the glass pane as the bus pulled away into a steady stream of traffic.
He wanted to cry, the tears already forming, his throat raw and ready to let it all out. He beat his fist to a tuneless rhythm on the rubber seal of the window, the scenery passing in a blur.
He rocked as the bus came to an abrupt stop, and then smeared condensation off the glass with the sleeve of his jacket and watched as the bus made its way through the city.
Forty minutes later, Will climbed off the bus and began walking home. He jumped as his mobile phone began to ring, and reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing the detective’s business card.
‘Hello?’
‘Will, it’s Jack. How are you? Any news?’
‘Not yet – she’s only just gone into the operating room,’ said Will. He could picture his boss pacing his office as he spoke, his dark grey hair pushed this way and that by his hands as he fought with bureaucracy for funding for his beloved archives department.
‘Well,’ said Jack, interrupting his thoughts, ‘take as much time as you need to be with her, Will. Your job will be here waiting for you.’ His voice was brusque, no-nonsense.
Will’s lips pursed. He heard Jack struggling to keep his composure under the circumstances. His boss had first met Amy at the department’s Christmas party two years ago, and with their love of research, the pair had got on well.
‘I will, thanks, Jack,’ he said, not wishing to prolong the conversation. ‘I’ve got to go.’
He hung up, put the phone back into his pocket, and pushed open the front door to the apartment block. Entering the lobby, he swore as he spied the sign pinned to the elevator doors, and then he altered course and pushed open the heavy fire exit door and began to climb the stairs to the eighth floor.
As he climbed, he began making lists in his head: the friends he’d need to call to stave off any rumours the media may have started about Amy’s condition; her editor who would be concerned for her, but already sending her colleagues to report on the new angle to the story; and clothing and toiletries to take back to the hospital which Amy would need while she recovered.
A heavy grinding sound penetrated his thoughts as he reached the sixth floor, and he cursed, and then leaned against the whitewashed concrete wall, sweat running between his shoulder blades.
The elevator was back in working order.
He eased himself away from the wall and slowly walked up the remaining flight of stairs. Reaching the eighth floor, he pushed open the fire exit door and began walking along the corridor towards the apartment. Reaching into his pocket for his keys, he thumbed through them while he walked until he found the small bronze-coloured one for the front door.
He glanced up to insert the key into the lock and froze, his mouth open in disbelief.
The lock had been broken. Splinters of wood protruded from around the brass lock, paint chips from the door frame scattered across the carpet under his feet. The door itself was closed against the frame – anyone casually passing the apartment would not have seen the damage caused.
Will touched the scrape marks around the lock. A chisel or file had been used, the work thorough but not necessarily professional – a rush job.
He looked over his shoulder, back along the corridor, but no one appeared from the closed doors of the fire escape. The elevator sign at the end of the corridor blinked the letter “G” once.
He stilled his breathing and listened. A television played loudly from the apartment two doors along, where an old lady lived, but he could hear nothing from within his home.
He slowly pushed the door open, treading sawdust across the threshold, his heartbeat thudding steadily in his ears.
The sheer devastation to the apartment was evident from the short narrow hallway which led through to the kitchen and living area. Pictures had been pulled from their hooks on the wall and lay broken on the thin carpet, their frames splintered among the shattered glass that crunched under his shoes.
Bile rose in his throat as he entered the living area, his arms limp by his side as he slowly lowered his backpack to the floor, and then carefully walked into the room and circled the damage.
A knife, or the tool used to break the front door lock, had been used to slice through the material of the matching sofa and arm chairs, the stuffing strewn throughout the room while the chairs had been tipped over, the underside linings ripped to shreds. The small coffee table had been turned upside down, scattering magazines and the television remote controls onto the floor. The dining table had been up-ended, the four accompanying chairs fallen onto their sides.
Will raised his eyes to the kitchen area, where cupboard doors had been pulled open and the contents spilled over the tiled floor. Glasses, plates, and coffee mugs had been thrown onto the floor, and Will’s feet kicked against cutlery which had been tipped out of drawers onto the tiles. Even the refrigerator had been emptied, the smell of discarded food already beginning to permeate the air, along with a faint trace of cigarette smoke.
Will blinked, recalled the elevator being out of service, then realised he’d nearly walked in on the intruder.
He retched, and quickly crossed the living area to the floor-to-ceiling windows which opened out onto a small balcony. He pulled aside the curtain and yanked open the glass door, then stepped outside and breathed deeply, filling his lungs and fighting the urge to vomit.
As he concentrated on breathing, he glanced down to the street below and the small park opposite the apartment block. Two toddlers screeched with delight as they were pushed back and forth on swings by their mothers, while a commercial airliner banked high in the sky above them as it took off from the city airport. In the distance, a dog barked as a siren passed its gate, and then fell silent.
Will wrapped his fingers around the guard rail and gripped it hard, his knuckles turning white. Everything seemed so normal, so peaceful. He turned and surveyed the inside of the apartment, realising he hadn’t even investigated the damage to the bedrooms and bathroom yet, and not really trusting himself to begin to look.
He inhaled deeply, then stepped from the balcony back into the apartment, and picked up each of the dining chairs in turn, before pulling up the table from the floor. He turned to the coffee table, set that upright and crouched down, reaching out and gathering the scattered magazines towards him before placing them on the table.
He stood then, and put his hands in his pockets, at a loss what to do next. His fingers brushed against the detective’s business card and his mind jolted. Pulling it from his pocket, he glanced at the number scrawled across the top of the card, then pulled out his mobile. He began dialling the number and then cursed as a message appeared, indicating the battery was nearly flat.
His eyes swept the debris-strewn carpet until he found the battery charger, plugged in the mobile phone then went hunting for the landline phone among the trashed apartment.
In four strides, he cleared the room and found the telephone pulled from the wall socket. Amy had insisted on keeping a landline at the apartment in case of emergencies. He smiled grimly at her prescience.
Will plugged the cable back in, and carried the phone across to the dining table, sat heavily in one of the chairs and put his head in his hands, rubbing at his hair as his mind churned. He breathed out slowly, sat upright and reached out to dial the emergency number.
His backside left the wooden surface of the chair as the phone began to ring while his fingers were only a fraction away from it, his heart surging painfully between his ribs.
His hand shaking, he wrapped his fingers around the receiver and picked it up. ‘H-hello?’
The voice at the other end was husky, low and urgent.
‘Do you have her laptop?’