The Taken

She stepped back, levelled the gun at the door, and took the safety off. “Christ,” she muttered as she began to squeeze the trigger. Behind the door, in the dim light of the lobby, she saw one of the elevators open and she raised the muzzle to the widening space. Then she saw it was Martha. Alone. Hazel hurriedly put the weapon back and tried to put a smile on her face. Martha opened the door with a bemused expression, an expression that told Hazel nothing untoward had happened. “Where the hell did you go?” she asked.

“I’m an idiot,” her mother said breathlessly. “I forgot which apartment was yours.”

“I’ve been up and down twice. God, you’re white as a sheet.”

“I ran down the stairs.”

“What? Why?”

“The elevator -” she said, but she couldn’t complete the sentence and had to lean forward and grip the steel frame of the door.

“Well, don’t stand there in the drizzle, then, come in. I’ll put on some coffee.”

Hazel caught her breath and straightened up. “No,” she said.

“No? After all this?”

“I want you to wait here.”

Martha jerked her head back, her mouth creased in perfect confusion. “What?”

“No, you’re right. Come up with me.”

She led her daughter to the elevators, Martha behind her saying, “What the hell is going on?” but she didn’t answer her, just waited for the doors to open again, ready to tear the gun out of its holster. The elevator was empty and she ushered Martha in.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I think someone might be stalking you.”

“What? Nobody is remotely that interested in me.”

The doors opened on the fourth floor and Hazel stepped out. “Wait in the hallway,” she said, but Martha strode around her mother, huffing, and unlocked her apartment door before Hazel could stop her. She had no choice: she rushed forward with the gun drawn and shoved past Martha in the doorway into the living room, spi

“I got a call.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was from downstairs. That wasn’t me in the speaker-phone before. Someone recorded my voice.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“Someone was here?’”

“They’re not here now, though,” said Hazel. “It’s okay now.”

Martha shook her head angrily and walked back into the living room. She sat heavily back onto the sofa. “Do you mean to say you keep track of my every move, imagining all kinds of harm coming to me, living in worry for me, but you didn’t know some creep with a recording of your voice might be paying me a visit?”

Hazel holstered the gun and sat across from Martha, unsure what to tell her. “It’s a live investigation, Martha. I had no idea it was even a possibility. Your dad’s name is on the lease, your number is unlisted. We did all that for a reason.”

“What was that reason again, Mum? Do you think all cops’ kids live in witness protection or something?”

“It was just a thought for your safety.”

“You would never have felt the need to do the same thing for Emilia.”

She’d come here worried for her daughter’s life and now, without so much as the wind changing, they were in familiar territory where Hazel couldn’t save Martha from anything. “I’m sorry,” she said now. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“So now what?”

“I think maybe you should come back home until all this is wrapped up.”

“No fucking way.”

“Martha -”

“I’m thirty-three,” her daughter said. “This is my home. How about I stay here and if it sounds like you’re downstairs, I’ll just pretend I’m not home.”

“Please, Martha.”

Her daughter said nothing. After a moment, the intercom buzzed and Martha blinked twice without moving. “You want to answer that or just shoot it?”

Hazel spiked the call button on the intercom. “Who is it?”

“I’m here,” said Wingate.

“We’ll be down in a minute,” she said. She disco

After a moment, Martha pushed herself up from the couch, exactly the same gesture Hazel could see in her mind’s eye when, as a teenager, Martha had finally acquiesced to a higher power and reluctantly taken direction. She came to her mother and took the coat from her, lifted it into the air, and put it back on its hook.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said.

“Do you want to know who was here, Martha?” she said, finally furious. “He was a cop once, and right now he’s got a man tied to a chair in a basement somewhere. Although not all of the man. He cut his hand off and sent it to me in a box and then he sliced the man’s ears from the sides of his head and painted a wall with them.” Martha was blanching. “So it’s your choice: put on that fucking coat and come downstairs with me now, or keep your apartment locked up tight and hope he doesn’t know how to kick in a door.”

She told Wingate to take his time going down Broadview, she’d had enough fast living for one day. Martha sat in the back seat, looking out the window in silence.

Wingate spoke quietly. “What the hell happened back there?”

“Goodman happened. But I had her…”

“Who?”

“Joa

“Jesus.”

“We have to move quickly now. With the both of them down here – I don’t know what he might do next.”

“That’s the sweater from the picture?”

“Supposedly it proves that Colin Eldwin killed Brenda Cameron.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something: we lucked out with Toles. He’s not the sharpest biscuit in the tin and he’s probably the only guy at Twenty-one who doesn’t know that Goodman made detective and then went berserk. We have to keep it quiet, but if we can get him to handle the sweater for us, we might have some new evidence we can go to the superintendent with.”

“You sound like you’re onside now, Hazel.”

“I’m getting close. Joa

“What? We owe it to him to carry it over the goal line?”

“No,” said Hazel. “We owe it to Joa

“She got her answer, Hazel. If you’re right, he convinced her to disregard it and if she did, that was her decision. Why is it our problem?”

“Because we caught the case, James. And we should see it through.”