Chapter 3: Mel
"You have got to be kidding me!"
The scream of rage echoed up the empty stairwell. A dark, braided head looked down over the banister from the floor above.
"You lose your keys again, girl?"
"I know I had them when I left work," the first voice called up, head still focussed on handbag and hands rummaging fervently. "I remember picking them up. I even remember putting them in here!"
"Which pocket?"
"Huh?"
"You always put them in a pocket, Mel, not the main section."
The rummaging ceased and attention was turned to the zipped side pockets of the bag. A moment later, a set of keys jingled and sparkled in the stairwell lights.
"Ana, you know me far too well!" Mel laughed, looking up finally. "You coming down tonight?"
"Leg's been bad today," Ana shrugged. "Why don't you come up? I got a ridiculously large pizza in the oven, beers in the fridge, ice cream in the freezer and some brand new bluerays that need watchin'."
"Gimme half an hour to get rid of the stench of sweaty reporters and I'll be right there," Mel grinned.
XXXX
It was a little under the half hour when Mel bounced up the stairs to her friend's apartment and opened the door. The open door didn't concern her: she and Ana always left their doors open when they were expecting one another. She made her way through the small hall and into the living area. The open-plan kitchen extended off to one side. A smell of burning pizza came from the oven. Mel hurried over and, grabbing the oven gloves, rescued the pizza from utter cremation.
"D'you forget to set the timer again, Ana?" Mel called, laughing. Putting a frozen pizza in the oven was the closest her friend ever got to cooking, and even that didn't always end well.
Frowning at the lack of response, Mel set the pizza tray down on the hob, depositing the oven gloves next to it, and headed back across to the hall. Ana's bedroom, spare room and bathroom all opened off the short corridor. Worried that her friend's prosthetic leg had caused her to fall and hurt herself, Mel checked each room methodically: first the bathroom, then the bedroom, both spartan in decoration and contents. Finally she checked the spare room: a room that had been given over to punchbags, weights and other training equipment.
The room was in uproar. Half the machines and all the weights were gone, the rest were toppled and dragged across the room. There were gouges in the training mats. Some had obviously been caused by moving machinery: a toppled cross-trainer still lay with one corner tearing through the mat. Other marks were smaller, thinner: like they had been made with a wide knife, or a claw. Stepping carefully, Mel searched the debris for any sign of Ana. She was half-way across the room when she saw them. She froze.
On one of the training mats there were ten clear, narrow, parallel lines that started in two curved arcs and finished very suddenly near the centre of the room. In the very start of one of the lines, Mel could see a fingernail.
XXXX
Time had passed. Mel was still sitting at the kitchen table, the now cold pizza congealing on the hob behind her. The police had turned up, eventually, but only after repeated hysterical descriptions of the state of the training room and a threat to run the story in Mel's paper: something which she, as a fairly junior story chaser and occasional opinion columnist, could in no way come through on should they have decided to call her bluff. Luckily they hadn't.
She had gone through all the necessary details with a uniformed officer, a detective and then a more senior detective. A female uniformed officer had sat with her in silence while the sound of boots moved back and forth in the hall outside. The occasional paper-clad forensics person had entered the living room and kitchen, dusting, spraying, photographing and generally checking that no other person had been present in the flat. Now the police had gone, the detectives had gone, the paper people from forensics had gone, even her silent shadow - the female uniformed officer whose name she had never managed to catch - was now gone. There was just her.
Just her, and Ana's empty flat.
And a pair of army boot standing just at the edge of her vision.
Mel looked up, following the intruder from boots to legs to torso to face. A soldier. Two more soldiers stood a short distance behind him. Something clicked in Mel's head: Ana was ex-army. That was how she had lost her leg.
Mel had only seen Ana in her uniform once, but she remembered remarking on the simple insignia that identified her friend's regiment: a black sword, or dagger, pointing upwards on an upward pointing red arrowhead. No: a spearhead, Ana had corrected her. The same red spearhead patch was clearly visible on the intruder's uniform. Same regiment, then. Mel regarded the soldier in silence for a moment, then decided to ask the question her mind was trying to answer: "Why are you here?"
The soldier pulled a face and smirked a little. "Not the first question most people would ask," he said, stepping over to the table and sitting down opposite Mel. "Most people would ask who I was first."
"I know who you are," Mel replied evenly. "You're from Ana's regiment. You wear the same insignia."
"My aren't you an observant one," the soldier grinned.
"It's my job," Mel tipped her head to one side. "Why are you here?"
"I'm here to find out what happened to Ana," the soldier answered with a nod.
"Did you know her?" Mel asked, not taking her eyes off the soldier's face. "Personally, I mean."
"She was my first lieutenant back when I first made major," he replied. "I led the op where she lost her leg."
"Major?" Mel glanced at the soldier's sleeve, her head tipped again, and frowned. She was no expert on military ranks, but...
"Same op that got me busted back down to captain," the soldier explained, watching her gaze.
"So what do I call you?" Mel asked, bringing her eyes back up to the soldier's face.
"Captain Fletcher Malloy," the soldier said. "But Malloy will do: you're a civilian. Ana used to call me Fletch when we weren't on duty."
"You know her well then?"
Fletch simply nodded and rose. "While we're on the subject of names, what can I call you?"
"Kowalski," Mel replied. "Melanie Kowalski. But Ana used to call me Mel."
Fletch nodded again and help out his hand. "You feel like showing me what the doughnut patrol's left?"
XXXX
There hadn't been much different about the training room when Mel led Fletch through. Just tell-tale traces of fingerprint powder here, the odd droplet of a spray there. She talked the captain through her conversation with Ana and everything she had done in the twenty-odd minutes that followed. She talked him through her arrival at the flat, letting herself in, rescuing the pizza and the futile search for her friend that had culminated in the discovery of the training room.
He had asked questions. She had answered them, mechanically, just as she had when the police had asked them two or three times before. Then, suddenly, a new question intruded on her consciousness, jolting her back to reality and the present.
"Wh-what?" Mel asked, confused.
"Were there any electrical disturbances?" Fletch repeated. "Lights flickering, radios buzzing or losing channels, TVs playing up: that sort of thing."
"What you think this is some kind of poltergeist attack or something?" Mel's eyebrows rose.
"Oh, I only deal with the usual horrors mother nature dreams up," the captain grinned. "Leave all that supernatural nonsense to the big guns."
"Then what?" Mel shrugged. "You obviously have some idea what could have done this. What was it?"
"Were there any electrical disturbances?" Fletch repeated, holding Mel's questioning gaze.
"Not that I noticed," Mel replied, keeping her own gaze steady. "But the only electricity I used was the shower and that was only on for ten minutes max, probably closer to five, and the hair dryer, and that keeps going off and on anyway: I've been meaning to replace it for months."
"And you heard nothing?" Fletch frowned.
"I got water in my ears in the shower," Mel shrugged. "Between that, the shower itself and the hairdryer: no, I heard nothing."
Fletch nodded, his eyes breaking contact with Mel and scanning the room. "I'm gonna leave two of my men here on guard," he said, finally. "I've gotta go meet some tech kid flying in from England with some new toys for my team. Once we've got them, I'll come back. I don't think it'll be much good though."
"So you think she's gone then?" Mel frowned, feeling her breath catch. "I mean for good? You don't think there's even a chance we could find her?"
"Oh, there's always a chance," Fletch admitted. "If there was ever a chance of finding anyone who disappeared like this, I know I'd put my money on Ana being the one to take it."
"You know what this is, don't you?" Mel demanded. "This is what you do, isn't it: you and your team?"
"In a manner of speaking," Fletch shrugged.
"So what is it, then?" Mel folded her arms and stood her ground. "What? Is it secret service stuff? Spies? Terrorists? Monsters under the bed? Aliens? What?"
Fletch raised an eyebrow at the rising volume coming from Mel. "It's none of those," he said, turning to face her. "It is, however, a matter of national security. That means it's classified. That means I can't tell you. I know you care about Ana, I do too, but there's nothing you can do here. You've told me everything you can, so now I suggest that we leave two of my boys here and the rest of us walk you back downstairs then leave. You have told me everything, haven't you?"
"Actually, there is one set of questions you haven't asked me," said Mel, her head tipping quizzically to the side again.
"And what's that?" Fletch breathed.
"You haven't asked me anything about the possibility of an intruder.