Jigsaw Lovers (22 page)

‘That’s terrible. Is he all right?’

‘He’s dead,’ the guard replied with no trace of emotion.

Smith was shocked. He’d read about the robbery in the paper. It had been particularly brutal, almost unnecessarily so. Two gunmen had shot down the two security guards in cold blood, riddling their bodies with AK rounds, even when they were wounded and down on the ground. Before they could make off with the money, these gunmen had, in turn, been shot dead by two passers-by.

The guard typed 16 into his computer and looked at the screen.

‘Are you sure its apartment sixteen, sir?’ he asked politely.

‘Yes, of course, I’m sure.’ Smith snapped. ‘I’ve been there a hundred times. Is there a problem?’

‘Its just that there doesn’t seem to be a Miss Johnston living in number sixteen, sir.’ The guard tapped the keyboard again, shook his head and said, ‘In fact sir, there isn’t a Miss Johnston in the entire block.’

‘Don’t be absurd. I know perfectly well that she lives here. She’s been overseas for a month and is due back today.’

‘Well nobody new has arrived today, sir. Perhaps you’d like to come back later. She may have arrived by then.’

Smith was going to argue some more, but catching sight of the wall clock realised he would be late for his first afternoon appointment if he didn’t leave now.

‘Thanks for your help. I’ll come back later.’ He turned to go and then a thought struck him. ‘Look, will you do me a favour? When Miss Johnston arrives can you ask her to phone me please. Its John Smith, OK?’

‘Certainly, sir. I think I’ve got that.’ The guard said writing it down, with a smile.

Diana hadn’t called by five o’clock. He went to her apartment block again. The guard recognised him. As Smith approached the desk he said,

‘I’m afraid no one by the name of Johnston has arrived today, sir.’

Smith felt his spirits sink. Perhaps she was on a late flight or he had mixed up the date. He would leave a note in her letter box, asking her to call him first thing in the morning at the Bank. He scribbled the message on the back of his business card and placed it in number sixteen’s post box on the way out into the street. It began to rain. Smith didn’t have his umbrella; he became wet and felt depressed and worried.

Smith’s feeling of depression and worry had increased considerably by the middle of the following morning. Diana still hadn’t telephoned and there was still no answer to the numbers, either in England or Cape Town, on which he had been trying to reach her all morning.

The only good thing as far as Smith was concerned was that there had been no further letters with pieces of photographs in them or any demands from whoever had sent the jigsaw photograph. Perhaps it was just a practical joke to worry him by one of his friends. He wasn’t really convincing himself but he had to try and think positively.

He was sipping his second cup of coffee when the telephone rang. He was so much on edge it startled him and caused him to drop the cup into his lap.

‘Good morning,’ a refined female voice began, ‘may I speak to Mr John Smith.’

For a brief moment he thought it was Diana, but then the moment passed and Smith felt uncomfortable as the warm coffee soaked into his underpants.

‘Yes, speaking. How may I help you?’

‘My name is Williams, Mrs Williams. You left your business card in my post box with a message on the back to telephone you at the Bank this morning,’ she stated with a quizzical expression in her voice.

‘I’m sorry I don’t understand you, Mrs Williams.’ Then he remembered the note he’d left for Diana. ‘You live in Queen Victoria Street, Mrs Williams?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then I do apologise. I must have put my card in your post box by mistake. I intended to leave it in number sixteen’s box.’

‘Are you sure that you have the right number Mr Smith?’

‘Yes definitely.’

‘But number sixteen is my box.’

‘It’s for the person who lives in apartment number sixteen,’ he said, trying to control his irritation.

‘Well, that’s why I’m phoning you, Mr Smith. I live in apartment number sixteen.’ He couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

‘But you’re not Diana Johnston.’ He sounded foolish.

‘No, I’m Fiona Williams, and I live at number sixteen, so you must have the wrong number,’ she stated simply.

He didn’t know what to say. How could this woman be living in Diana’s flat.

‘Are you a guest of Diana Johnston?’ he asked. ‘Are you looking after her flat while she’s overseas, is that what you mean?’

‘I don’t see what business it is of yours but my husband and I bought this flat last month and moved in two weeks ago. You must have made a mistake.’

‘But that’s not possible. It can’t be.’ What was Diana doing? Why would she sell her lovely flat without telling him?

‘I can assure you it is, Mr Smith. I’m afraid I’m very busy, so if there’s nothing else I’ll say good-bye.’

‘One moment,’ he almost shouted, ‘would you mind if I came to visit you, please. Just to put my mind at rest. Something very strange is going on here.’ He was almost pleading.

‘Well I don’t know about that. We’ve never met.’ He could be a weirdo or psychopath for all she knew.

‘Please, its very important that I sort this out. It won’t take long, I promise. Could I come this evening when your husband’s there?’

It must have been something in his voice that convinced her of his genuineness. It was an absurd situation at best but he did sound sincere. And he was a bank manager, but that didn’t mean anything these days. Most of them, in her experience, were peculiar and it seemed Mr Smith was no exception.

‘Very well. I’ll expect you at six-thirty this evening,’ she said, then hung up.

That evening Smith walked into the atrium just before six-thirty. The same security guard that he had spoken to yesterday was on duty. Looking up from his newspaper as the door opened he recognised Smith.

‘Good evening, sir. Still no sign of Miss Johnston, but Mrs Williams is expecting you in apartment sixteen. I’ll call her to tell her you’re on your way up.’ He spoke into the telephone as Smith walked to the lifts.

Smith pushed the button for the eighth floor. He looked at himself in the bronze mirror-glass on the wall of the lift. He looked haggard, not at all like the expression he’d had on the previous occasions he’d taken this lift. The lift came to a gentle cushioned halt and he walked out to the right and pushed the brass buzzer beside number sixteen.

A few moments later the door was opened by an elegant women in her mid forties, wearing a tweed skirt just below the knee and a white blouse with cashmere cardigan.

‘You must be Mr Smith. I’m Fiona Williams and this is my husband, David,’ she said standing back for him to enter.

Smith walked in and for a moment couldn’t believe his eyes. This was Diana’s flat where he’d been so many times and yet it wasn’t. Everything had changed; where there had been terracotta floors with rugs there was wall-to-wall carpeting, the fixed drapes with silk blinds were now hanging curtains either side of the windows. The place had been totally repainted, the kitchen re-styled in oak with different floor tiles. None of Diana’s furniture was here.

He didn’t recognise the place. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew he was in number sixteen then he would have thought that he had made a mistake.

‘Mr Smith,’ her voice cut through his thoughts, ‘are you all right? You look rather pale. David, fetch a glass of water. Here, sit down.’ She helped him to the nearest chair and he tried to regain his composure as he sipped the water.

‘Everything’s changed. I can’t believe it. Why would she leave with
out telling me? My girlfriend …’ He stopped himself before he revealed any more to these two complete strangers.

‘I’m sorry, its just a bit of a shock. Could I just ask you a couple of questions and then I won’t disturb you further?’

‘Certainly, if we’re able to help,’ she answered. The man was obviously distressed, maybe a little disturbed, but he seemed harmless enough.

‘When did you first see this flat? Can you remember the date?’

‘That’s easy. July the second.’

‘And was it like this or different? The walls, the carpets?’ he asked.

‘Oh no. Couldn’t have been more different,’ she started.

‘I thought so,’ said Smith.

‘It was like a builder’s yard. All the walls and ceilings had just been plastered, the kitchen didn’t exist, the floor boards were all up.’ She smiled. ‘It was just what we were looking for. Somewhere we could design from scratch. Apparently it was one of the last in the block to be renovated according to the agent. Ideal for our needs, and the decorators were able to finish it very quickly. Everything went so smoothly we were moved in after only two weeks. Unbelievable.’

It was just that, unbelievable. Smith couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. Standing up, he looked around the place once more, shook his head, thanked them for their time and left.

In the street he was thinking that he had last seen Diana in that flat on June the thirtieth. Two days later the Williams said they saw it and it was like a builder’s yard. He didn’t understand what was going on. Was he losing his mind?

It had been almost a month since the last piece of the jigsaw, together with the complete picture, had arrived in Smith’s post. Nothing else had happened. There had been no notes or demands for money. No attempt at blackmail or any type of threat had been made. The behavior of his wife was no different from normal, and as far as he could judge she was totally unaware of what was going on.

Smith wrestled with the problem. When he had received the photograph he had automatically assumed that he would be the target of some form of blackmail.

The two things he couldn’t understand or work out were, what was the point of sending him the photograph and then doing nothing, and secondly, he had no idea as to who would be likely to send such a photograph, in such a manner.

These aspects gave him great cause for concern. It had dominated his waking thoughts. As the month had gone by and each day brought forth no new surprises in the post, he began to relax a little. He was sleeping better, and was feeling a lot more comfortable about the situation than he had been a month ago. Maybe whoever had sent it had changed their mind or had become scared about getting involved with blackmail. Perhaps that would be as far as the whole episode would go. He should attempt to put it behind him and forget about it.

What he couldn’t forget about so easily was Diana Johnston. She had completely disappeared. He had waited several days after the enquiries he had made at her flat and still she had not come back or telephoned. He was worried that something may have happened to her. He couldn’t believe how much he loved her and missed her, and how much she had come to mean to him in such a short time. It was as if something fundamental in his whole life was missing.

He had tried to the best of his abilities to attempt to track her down.

He had telephoned the airlines to see if she had been booked on any flights that had arrived in the country, a week either side of her expected return date. They had been remarkably patient and accommodating with him, but had managed to find no reservations in the name of Diana Johnston.

On an impulse he asked if they had a record of her flying from Cape Town to London on 30 June. It was confirmed that she had flown from Cape Town to Johannesburg, but surprisingly there was no record of her having carried on to London on that flight. He checked with all the airlines that operated the route and none of them had taken a Diana Johnston from Johannesburg to London, or any other destination for that matter.

She had disappeared without trace. This baffled him and at the same time made him extremely worried.

One night he had a terrible dream. It was filled with gruesome images of Diana being mugged, raped and killed in Johannesburg, and left in a reeking gutter. So powerful had the images in the dream been that it occupied his thoughts all the next day and barely allowed him to sleep the next night.

He even went to the extreme lengths of telephoning the police to ascertain whether they had any unidentified corpses that fitted Diana’s description. Fortunately for him in this instance, they too could find no trace of her.

Not long after these episodes, the letters he had written to Diana in England were returned to him. They were unopened. Diana’s name had been circled in red on the front of the envelope, and across it was scribbled ‘Return to sender, not known at this address’.

He had exhausted all the avenues of investigation that he could think of to try and locate Diana. She had just vanished off the face of the earth. It was as though she had never existed. He was heart-broken and miserable, but more than that he was desperately concerned about her welfare. If only she would contact him to let him know that she was alive and well, he would be able to relax a little.

Another aspect, associated with Diana’s disappearance,
which was also causing him to worry was the overdraft that he had arranged for her; an overdraft which was totally unsecured. Interest was accumulating at an alarming rate. If the auditors picked up on it in the next audit he would have some very difficult questions to answer. He had behaved in an unethical fashion, allowing his personal desires to overcome his business responsibilities. Such behaviour was totally out of character. It could even affect the plans for his promotion, for which he had worked so long and so hard. He remembered, with a mixture of longing and increasing anxiety, the afternoon he had suggested the idea to her.