A Bad Bad Thing. Elena Forbes

side of the room, where an old sofa and an armchair were grouped around a TV. The walls were bare and the carpet was cheap and threadbare, as were the flimsy, patterned curtains. It all had a transient feel and he wondered if Mickey actually spent any time there. If he didn’t, where was he? A printer stood on top of a filing cabinet, next to the chimneybreast, on the other side of the room. The drawers were hanging open and, as he crossed the room to take a better look, he saw that the carpet behind the sofa was covered with a mess of files and papers. It looked as though somebody had been searching for something in a hurry and a lamp had been knocked over and lay on its side in the middle. He picked it up, placed it on a side table, and clicked the switch. But it, too, was dead.

      Wondering if Mickey had had some sort of a drunken tantrum in the dark, he called out, ‘Hello, Mickey. It’s Dan. Are you there?’ No reply.

      A narrow corridor led from the room to the back of the house and what he assumed was the bedroom. He called out again, hoping to wake Mickey, if he was there. Again, no answer. He imagined Zofia at his shoulder, whispering in his ear. Go on, Dan. Don’t give up now. He must be in there. Maybe he’s ill. Maybe he needs help. What if he’s hiding from you? £500 is a lot of money. He knocked at the bedroom door, put his hand on the handle, then pushed it open.

      The first thing that hit him was the stink. Urine. Vomit. Something even more unpleasant. The stale air was thick with it and it caught in the back of his throat. He wanted to retch and clamped his jacket sleeve over his nose and mouth as he shone the torch into the room. The small double bed stood at an odd angle away from the wall and clothes had been pulled out from the little chest of drawers and strewn around all over the floor.

      It took him two steps to find Mickey. He lay on his side, on the floor behind the bed, naked apart from a pair of tight blue underpants, his hands and feet tightly shackled behind him to a kitchen chair. A pool of thick, dark liquid surrounded his head like a halo and his eyes were open, as far as Dan could tell from the swollen, beaten face, which was smeared with dried blood. His mouth was stretched wide, stuffed with what looked like a rolled-up sock, the toe poking out between his lips. Blindly, Dan staggered out of the room, through the sitting room, and into the bathroom. His phone clattered to the floor, as he fell to his knees and vomited into the toilet bowl. The smell from Mickey’s bedroom still filled his nostrils and his head was throbbing. He felt hot and cold all at once, the nausea coming in waves. He couldn’t focus. He couldn’t think. His first reaction was to run, but he couldn’t even stand up. Was Mickey’s killer still in the flat? He didn’t think so. The blood was dark and several hours old at least. When had it happened? He couldn’t get the smell of it out of his mind. He vomited again and closed his eyes, the image of Mickey still in front of him.

      Eventually, the nausea began to fade. He sat back on his heels and felt around the cold floor in the darkness for his phone. Finding it, he switched the torch back on and pulled himself up to his feet. He had to clear his lungs. He stumbled back to the front door and yanked it open, letting in a wet gust of air from the street. He stood just inside the door for a few moments, breathing in and out to calm himself. His head was throbbing worse than ever. Somehow he had to work out what to do, but he couldn’t think clearly. He needed painkillers. He went back into the bathroom and shone the torch around the tiny room. It appeared to be untouched by whoever had been searching the flat and he was surprised, given Mickey’s usually dishevelled appearance, how orderly it was, with just the basic essentials neatly lined up on a shelf above the basin. A small, mirrored medicine cabinet hung over the bath, half hidden behind the shower curtain. There was nothing in it apart from some spare razor blades, a jar of Vicks and a large plastic tub of Advil, which he assumed was left over from a recent trip Mickey had made to the US. It would have to do.

      Hands shaking, he fumbled with the childproof cap. As he finally wrenched it off, the bottle slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor, spilling a mass of small red pills around him that bounced like beads on the tiles, along with something else that made a click as it dropped. He shone the torch over the floor and eventually found what he was looking for lurking behind the basin. He picked it up and studied it. It was a little, red memory stick, almost the same colour as the pills. 128GB. For Mickey to have hidden it so carefully, it must be important. He slid it into his jeans pocket. Mickey had been a secretive sort and he imagined him having a whole host of little hiding places dotted around the flat. He wondered how many of them the killer had found – and how many Mickey had been forced to give away under torture. He downed a couple of pills with a handful of water and then splashed some more water on his face as he studied himself in the mirror, wondering what to do.

      There was no point in running away. His prints were all over the flat. He had no memory of exactly what he had touched and he knew it would be impossible to get rid of them all. His prints were also logged on the national system, thanks to a charge of affray as a student, and it wouldn’t take long for the police to link him to the flat. He would have to call them, as soon as he’d worked out what to say. He smeared some Vicks under his nose and went back into the sitting room for a final look. There was no sign of Mickey’s laptop and he assumed the killer had taken it, along with any external hard drive. If Mickey’s mobile was still around, it would be in the bedroom, but he couldn’t face going back in there. He was feeling shaky again and was about to leave, when he noticed a piece of paper lying facedown in the out tray of the printer. He picked it up and turned it over. It was a printout of a race card from the Racing Post, showing the runners for the 1.50 at Ascot the previous Saturday. He remembered what Mickey had told him the week before, about needing some funds to go racing. ‘For research purposes,’ Mickey had said. He had only half believed him. He photographed it, then returned the sheet to the printer tray as he had found it. He had seen enough. He needed a drink. He would go and sit in the car, while he worked out what to do.

      As he went outside, the cold night air hit him with force, along with another wave of nausea. He sat down on the steps outside Mickey’s front door and put his head in his hands. His phone started to ring in his back pocket. It was probably Zofia demanding an update. He decided he would have to speak to her and pulled it out but he didn’t recognize the number on the screen. He stared at it for a moment, then pressed the green button, putting it on speaker. A woman’s voice, low in tone and English, was saying something he couldn’t quite hear against the background buzz of traffic. He caught the name Sean Farrell, then the word ‘prison’. It took him a moment to realize it must be Eve West.