The room seemed to close in on Dave; it seemed unsafe - as if his own claustrophobia would trap him in. The bright lights and voices made him feel dizzy. The questioning had now begun.
“Dave, can you tell us what happened on the night of the 7th November, 2001”
Dave told the pair all he could. His voice by now was as shivery as a naked person would be in Antarctica. P.C. Stevenson reached for her pen as Dave was speaking. He glared at her as if she was evil. He fell off his chair as he was in such a rush to get away from her. He ran to the exit.
“Get me away from her!”
Dave burst into tears as he collapsed onto his knees and slammed his head against the door, as if it was thin air.
“You can do this another time if you want, Dave”
Dave glared. He was scared, but yet he wanted to finish the interview.
“I insist that I do this now, even if it takes all night!”
CHAPTER 3: 16th January 2001, 09:05
By the next morning, Dave had realised that he couldn’t live his life hiding. He knew that even though someone in the world brutally attacked him, there was another person in the world that saved him.
He went downstairs and started to look through his local phone book, searching for a person he had heard of from a friend. When he found their ad, he tapped in the numbers, breaking a distressing silence in the house. He sat on the bottom step and waited. The ring tone ended and a deep voice answered…
“Hullo?”
“Yes, is that D.C. Greenfield’s detective agency?”
“It sure is mate! How can I help?”
“I want to find a person who saved my life. It’s really important to me, so money’s no object”
“Fine, I’ll be right over for some details! Can I take your address?”
16th January 2001, 11:00
The knock Dave had been waiting far had come. He hoped D.C. Greenfield was as good as his reputation. Dave told him the facts as he could remember them,
“I know there isn’t much to go on, but until I sort out this mess, I won’t be able to get on with my life”
D.C. Greenfield didn’t look too optimistic,
“Who do you want to find, your attacker or your rescuer?”
Dave pondered. He wanted both, but knew that he wouldn’t be able to confront his attackers, supposing Greenfield found them.
“The police are already searching for my attacker, so will you can find the person who saved me, please?”
The search for the person who had rescued Dave Waterman had now begun…
CHAPTER 4: 20th January 2001, 14:25
D.C Greenfield was now ready to investigate the crime scene, after being authorised to do so by the police. In the last four days, Greenfield had planned the visit very carefully. He knew that if he went today, it would be Saturday. This meant football fans would walk past the building, which would probably scare the gang away.
He approached the building with great caution. As he entered, he couldn’t see anything. It was a bare room, with graffiti all around and a light fitting on the ceiling. He felt pretty insecure inside, but it was his job; he had been in similar situations before.
He was searching for any trap doors or false walls in the building. He knew that the police probably concentrated more on finding DNA evidence on the scene. He eventually spotted a patch of graffiti on the floor, with a minute dimple in the middle.
It looked like a lock, which was barely noticeable with the graffiti camouflaging it. He didn’t know how on Earth to open it, so he started to look for a key in the patches of graffiti. This was to no avail.
The lock had started to rust over. It looked as if it hadn’t been open for months. He looked in the gap between the door and its frame with his magnifying glass, and saw that the lock was very weak. He decided to break it down. He didn’t know how high the room was though, or if there were steps or a ladder underneath, so he was reluctant to jump on it with both feet. He began to stamp on the door with one foot, hitting it harder and harder each time. It eventually smashed through, breaking the hinges as well as the lock. Inside the door he noticed some stone steps.
He walked down them with great caution, avoiding the splashes of blood. He presumed it was the dark room Dave was talking about. The click of his torch broke the long, unnerving silence of the room. Greenfield was amazed by the amounts of blood staining the floor.
Greenfield was marvelling in disbelief, when he suddenly uttered,
“What the…?”
He noticed a black box. Just in case it was something vital for the murder case, he put on is gloves, taking great care to avoid any blood.
Greenfield crouched down beside the box, and grimaced as he reached into the blood to retrieve it. It was a mobile phone! He pondered over why a mobile phone was down here for a moment; before remembering that Dave told him about a shadow dialling 999 on his mobile phone. Greenfield started grinning, because if his hunch was correct, then he had probably found the rescuer’s phone – because he presumed that nobody else had been able to get in the room except him. He looked onto the phone’s memory, and indeed, the last number dialled was 999. All he had to do now was to find its owner, which shouldn’t be as difficult…
CHAPTER 5: 21st January 2001, 08:55
Dave got a call from the police:
“Hello, sir. Can you come to the station?”
Dave was still dazed as the phone woke him up from another uneasy night
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, we now have a witness for the Waterman attacks!”
“Really? How? When?”
Dave didn’t quite know what the police officer was talking about, as D.C. Greenfield never told him about what happened the day before…
“Just come down to the station ASAP. We will call D.C. Greenfield in, too”
21st January 2001, 10:10
At the police station, Inspector Grantham told Dave about the mobile phone left on the floor. D.C. Greenfield was having his fingerprints taken, in case he got his fingerprints on the murder scene,
“We’re terribly sorry about this. When we inspected the property, we never found the entrance in question. We were specifically advised to look for DNA evidence by Sergeant Dixon, rather than any secret rooms. This is why we were forced to presume that there was only one room in the building.”
This hadn’t quite sunk in for Dave yet. He looked to be acting normal on the outside, but he couldn’t quite register what this meant on the inside,
“We will get you the name of the witness, but only if the fingerprints on the mobile phone show a match in our files. We want you to meet your rescuer as much as you do. We see it as a peace offering, because we feel that we should hold the responsibility for our misleading guidance as to what was happening…”
“Thanks! I kinda don’t have a clue what your talking about, but how long will it be before I get the address?”
“Not very long at all, sir. In fact, I think we’ve just got the information back now, if this officer is going to tell me what I think she will tell me!”
She was holding a piece of laminated card. The officer read it, and photocopied it. Curious of what it was, Dave asked,
“What is that?”
“The address sir! Here, take it!”
Dave snatched the paper, and started to sprint down the corridor, unwisely barging into police officers as he went.
The end of the search is now in sight…
CHAPTER 6: 21st January 2001, 11:25
As Dave rapidly approached his car, he read out the address to the private detective, who was trying (rather unsuccessfully) to keep up with him:
“26 Pride Avenue - lets get the road map out!”
Dave reached onto the back seat of his car, and retrieved the map. He frantically searched for Pride Avenue, ripping the map to shreds in the process. He jumped for joy when he found it - especially as it was only a twenty-minute drive away.
“Let’s go and find my rescuer!”
“I’m not coming!”
“Why?”
Dave wondered why Greenfield wouldn’t come. He presumed that he didn’t want to get in the way of him and his rescuer when they met, so he carried on searching as if he didn’t care
“You do know your rescuer was involved in drugs, don’t you?”
“What?”
Dave’s emotions went from one extreme to another, from happiness to gloom. In a few seconds, the prospect of meeting his rescuer didn’t seem so appealing. He felt as if the search had ended; the last thing he wanted was to get into even more trouble with dangerous people.
D.C. Greenfield walked away, as Dave wept uncontrollably. Had the search now ended?
CHAPTER 7: 22nd January, 02:45
Dave couldn’t sleep, because he had a lot to think about. He didn’t seem quite so eager to meet this person any more. He tried really hard to get some sleep, so he could decide the next day, but it was impossible.
He knew that he would be in danger if he went to see someone involved with drugs, but he was having second thoughts. He was slowly realising that he presumed that because his rescuer was involved in drugs, he must have been bad. Dave never thought about the fact that if his rescuer saved him from near death, then he couldn’t be all that bad.
Even though the visit would be fraught with danger, he had made his mind up. He was determined to end the search in the next 24 hours…
CHAPTER 8: 22nd January 2002, 10:35
The following morning, Dave rushed to the car after getting out of bed. It all seemed as if he’d completely forgotten about the drugs, and remembered the person that save him from death. He set off on the drive that would conclude his quest.
When he arrived at the house, he walked up to the front door. At first, he thought that the place was a dump, but then again he didn’t care. The plants in the almost-derelict flower bed were trampled, the gate was on the floor alongside two broken hinges, and the cracked paving was like walking along the San Andreas fault line on Friday 13th. He went up to the front door, and knocked on it. Mysteriously, the door slowly opened, making an eerie creaking sound. He started to wonder what was going on…
Going against all his fears, he decided to walk inside. Dave wondered what had happened to this old building. The walls were covered in graffiti, and the house was really dirty, with broken furniture in the hallway. This started to scare Dave, because he thought it looked similar to his murder scene. He was worried that something had happened to the owner. He slowly opened the living room door, to find the most horrible sight he had ever have seen…
CHAPTER 9: 22nd January 2002, 11:20
“Oh my God!”
Dave was horrified as he stood in the corner of the room, witnessing this awful sight. The long silence was only being broken by his heartbeat. He was witnessing the murder scene of his rescuer.
However scared he was, he had to check his rescuers heartbeat. Dave approached her as he saw blood pumping from open pairings from her chest.
“What have you been doing?” whispered Dave humorously, as he was tapping 999 into his mobile phone.
22nd January 2002, 11:30
Within minutes, the sirens of ambulance vans racing towards the house overpowered the silence. Dave was stunned by the amounts of blood all around this person, who had clearly been stabbed over and over again.
Ambulance crews sprinted into the room to try and save her. One nurse quickly put her stethoscope onto the victim’s badly bruised chest to check her pulse.
“She’s still alive! Get a stretcher and something to stop this blood!”
“Is she alright?” asked Dave
“She’s badly wounded… there’s a strong chance that she will die”
The nurse went to check her pulse again to see how fast it was beating. Silence. The nurse bowed her head as she slowly stood up to bereave her.
“What’s wrong nurse? Come on… help her for Gods sake!”
“She’s dead”
Dave looked distraught. He started to cry as he knelt down by her side, trying to take all this in…
“Did you know her?” asked the nurse sympathetically.
Dave pulled his jumper up to reveal the scars on his chest, which had still not healed,
“Yeah, she saved my life!” replied Dave, before resuming his bereavement.
22nd January 2002, 11:40
A few minutes later, the chief nurse of the team told Dave that they were going to take the body away. Dave wanted to value the last seconds in her presence before he went off to carry on with his life, but knowing who his rescuer was.
He assumed that some people killed her, because she was involved in drugs, and she had got into trouble with the same people as he did. Dave thought that everyone would think she was a villain in this, but in fact, Dave thought of her as a hero. Clearly shaken, he stood up, and muttered:
“You may have lived dangerously, and people may have thought you were horrible for taking drugs, but you can’t be all that bad if you were willing to save my life… thank you”
Dave followed the stretcher outside to see her off in the van. As it drove away, he turned around and began to walk into his replenished life…
The end
