MATTHEW ROY DAVEY - NEIGHBOURS

Matthew Roy Davey has won the Dark Tales and The Observer short story competitions.  He has been long-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction award, Reflex Flash Fiction competition, Retreat West Quarterly competition and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  He lives in Bristol, England and has no hobbies

Neighbours
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​Gerard Hawkins had been lucky for over six months.  Unless one counted the happenstance of being born in a sage and prosperous place and age, of being blessed with sound body and mind, good looks and, some would say, a way with music, he had never been particularly fortunate, and so when the luck came it was unexpected, even shocking.  He’d been on the point of quitting London and returning to his native Wales, resigned to applying for teacher training, a vocation to which his introversion was entirely unsuited.  All his efforts and endeavours had lead nowhere.  He’d been living in a rented room in Streatham and trying without success to promote his music for over a year.  Friends were hard to come by and the paid work he did ate like rust at the hull of his soul.  In spite of the awareness that he was more likely to be run over by the same bus twice on the same day, Gerard played the lottery, feeling foolish each time he entered his numbers, filled with horror every time he missed a payment lest those digits come up, though of course they never did. 
Until they did. 
With a giddy feeling of unreality that never really left him, Gerard watched the numbers roll into a line of mathematical improbability that immediately and irrevocably changed his life.  He won two and half million pounds and promptly quit his job and found a flat on the seventh floor of a new apartment complex on the banks of the Thames.  It had only just been completed, built on the site of pre-war council flats that had been demolished after the right to buy tenants had been bought out by an international conglomerate.  He’d been lucky to get the apartment, the estate agent told him, it was the last unit in any of the three luxury tower blocks, craggy sentinels of glass and steel that stood on the south bank, all the others had been purchased by Russian or Arab investors.  Quite how this one had escaped their attention no one seemed sure, it was clearly a mistake, but he was urged to snap it up before anyone noticed, and even though it swallowed half his winnings he was assured that it would give a good return when he came to sell.  Indeed, within a fortnight of moving in a solicitor’s letter had arrived offering £100,000 over the asking price.  The other apartments, he was told, would almost always be unoccupied which would leave him free to make as much noise as he liked.
With his new found wealth Gerard bought some new equipment including a guitar that had once belonged to Syd Barrett, furnished his flat, though sparsely, and bought three midnight blue suits, all of the same cut, and ten identical shirts.  He traded in his elderly Peugeot for a white tradesman’s van more suitable to transporting his equipment to gigs.
The flat was road-side rather than Thames-side, though from his balcony he could still watch the boats plying up and down the sliding brown waters of the river.  Gerard enjoyed watching the cars on Nine Elms Lane and watching the empty apartment windows of the tower block opposite.  He would spend hours gazing from his vantage point, content in the certainty that there was nothing he had to do, safe in the knowledge of his own freedom.  It was as dizzying as looking down at the near empty car park, knowing that he could throw himself off.  He enjoyed the vertigo, the swimming sensation in his head and the queasy feeling in his belly.  He didn’t even mind the noise of the traffic on Nine Elms Lane, in fact he grew used to the metronomic hum, the halting growl and then the consequential roar as the traffic lights released the motors from stasis.  Inside his apartment the triple glazing and soundproofing rendered the noise almost imperceptible.  The only blot on his contentment was a homeless man, a shapeless form below, who shuffled up and down the Lane with his shopping trolley piled high with possessions.  Nevertheless, he told himself, such grit in the oyster led to creativity and it was not long before Gerard had used the man as stimulus for a song.  He’d been worried that his luck might bring its own curse, that comfort might block inspiration, but so far such fears had proved ungrounded, he had nearly completed an album’s worth of material that he now had the funds to produce, tour and promote.  The potential of the next few months filled him with more excitement than any thrill he’d received from his windfall.
Without the need to work Gerard found himself spending whole days in his apartment, watching the sun set with the realisation that he had never felt its rays.  He began to impose a routine upon himself, getting up and composing or mixing until lunchtime and then walking at least a mile to find somewhere to eat.  In the afternoon he’d try to take in a gallery or a film.  He’d then return to his apartment in the late afternoon to work for another couple of hours.  Before dinner he’d exercise in the gym on the top floor, cycling or running as he gazed over the capital, the whir of the machinery the only sound in the deserted space.  On either side of him stretched rows of idle machines and equipment, red lights set at zero, untouched metal surfaces gleaming under the strip-lights.  Mounted on the wall a huge muted television played lurid music videos to the deserted room.  Instead of sweat the smell of new carpet filled the air. 
While he enjoyed the solitude of having the entire block to himself, Gerard was also aware of the strangeness of the situation, of how abnormal his existence was.  On occasion he even found the lack of life a little creepy.  It wasn’t so much the absence that could be unsettling as the possibility of unexpectedly encountering another human being.  The foyer of the complex was always empty and lifeless.  An abstract still-life hung on the wall over an art-deco sofa, its cushions as uncreased as the day they were made.  As Gerard waited for the lift to arrive the intensity of the silence always seemed to grow.  He would listen to the whir of the mechanism bringing the empty car closer and as the doors slid open, brace himself for the shock of finding someone inside.  Thus far it had always been empty, a silver box in which he found only his reflection staring back from the mirrored wall.    Nevertheless he could not shake the unease the lifts gave him and as he stepped forward he always checked the reflected corners, the recesses to the left and right of the door, the blind spots that could only be seen when one was almost within.  
Gerard spent most evenings working or reading, though once a fortnight he organised a gig to showcase his new material and every so often he’d go out for drinks with friends.  One night returning along the Nine Elms Lane he noticed a light in the black expanse of his block and wondered if he’d failed to switch his off, but on counting the floors down from the top he realised that the illumination was on the eighth floor, the one above his own.  He stopped on the pavement and gazed up, frowning.  There were never any lights on at night other than the corridor lights that shone through the windows at the sides of the building.  Otherwise the face of the nocturnal tower was usually a featureless black slab.  But not tonight.  It seemed intrusive that someone could be so close, Gerard’s space had always seemed so isolated and private.  As he stared up a dark silhouette appeared in the window.  Though he couldn’t say why Gerard had the impression that the figure was watching him.  As he continued towards the foyer the figure disappeared. 
It was with a feeling nearing panic that Gerard pressed the button for the lift and when it arrived he breathed a sigh of relief to find it empty.  On reaching his floor he glanced into the corridor to check no one was there before exiting.  The corridor seemed longer than usual, each door he passed more silent than ever, pregnant with potential.  Once in his flat he stood in darkness, listening.  No noise came from above.  He went out onto the balcony and craning to look up, saw that the light had been extinguished.  Perhaps, he thought, it had been the concierge checking on something.  There was nothing unusual he realised, in the flat being occupied, but nevertheless he found it unsettling. 
He did not have to dwell on it long.  Within half an hour, in the block opposite, in the apartment level with his own, up to that point always in darkness, he saw lights come on.  The windows were slid back and conversation and laughter spilled into the night, rising and mingling over the thump of European house music.  A couple of men, trim of waist and triangular of torso came out onto the balcony, laughing and smoking.  One of them barked something back into the flat and a blond woman in a purple cocktail dress emerged.  The silk of the dress clung to her hips and, snug beneath the swell of her breasts, the slight protrusion of her belly.  Across the fifty feet of space Gerard could see a face heavily made up but undeniably beautiful.  One of the men curled an arm around her, said something to his friend and all three laughed.  When the men went back inside the woman stayed on the balcony smoking.  Gerard realised she was looking at him.  He raised his hand and waved.  She continued to stare and then, flicking her cigarette over the edge of the balcony, turned and returned to the party.
For the next month Gerard saw no lights in the apartments above or opposite, though other windows became illuminated in both blocks on other occasions, owners who, he supposed, preferred an investment residence rather than staying in hotels.  The lights would go on for a night or two and shadowy figures would move within, then darkness would again descend.
The evening the light came back on he had played a gig.  The performance had been in an intimate space under an arch at London Bridge and at the end of the evening a record company executive had introduced himself and asked if his label might take over pressing, promotion and distribution of the album.  Gerard had listened to the man’s enthusiastic praise and flattered had agreed to meet the following week to discuss signing a deal.  He needed time to think it over, he told the man, trying to conceal his excitement. 
He’d returned to his flat ebullient and tipsy.  He’d been surprised to see a large truck with black sides leaving the car park and wondered, having seen the light returned to the apartment over his, if someone was moving in. 
When he got up to his flat he noticed the apartment in the block opposite aglow once again, the doors to its balcony flung open.  He watched for a while but although the sounds of Billie Holiday drifted over there was no movement from within. 
Gerard, high on the success of his evening, poured a generous Lagavulin and settled in his chair to watch the far windows where the floor length curtains drifted in the breeze.  It was past midnight and still the city hummed with traffic.  On Nine Elms Lane a crowd of drunks mocked the trolley pushing tramp, their raucous shouts echoing in the orange glow of the streets lights.  
Gerard straightened in his chair as a slim figure passed from left to right beyond the curtains.  Seconds later she reappeared, blond hair now pulled back in a ponytail and a lit cigarette in her hand.  She was without makeup and wearing a grey sweatshirt and jogging bottoms.  They stared at one another across the emptiness and when she moved the cigarette to her lips he raised his own to inhale.  She smiled through her smoke as he raised his hand in greeting, then laughed and looked away, coy suddenly, and then, looking back moved her fingers as though playing a series of notes on a harp.  They smoked and stared at one another and when his cigarette was finished Gerard held the pack out, lid open as though she might reach across the abyss and take one.  She threw her head back, laughing and then with the slightest shake of her head turned and went inside.  As she slid the doors closed her gaze met his once again and in the light of the moon her eyes shone against the darkness of the room.   
The next morning Gerard checked his mail box in the space off the foyer, a wall of small steel doors with a space for name plates.  Other than his own, marked with his flat number and ‘Hawkins’, the other doors were blank with one exception, a resident on the third floor named Blokhin.  Inside his box Gerard found another solicitor’s letter, this time offering him a price in excess of the previous offer.  He put the letter straight into the recycling.
The next night she was there again.  As before they smiled, smoked and gazed into each other’s eyes.  The feeling was there again, growing, a swelling, a nervous excitement, a desire to be near, to be nearer.  He dared himself and spoke, calling across the distance as though from one lifeboat to another.
“Would you like a drink?”
She shook her head and put her finger to her lips.  He frowned, seeing her scanning the side of the tower block, the apartments around his.  When her eyes met his again they were smiling but not as before.  She put her finger to her lips again, flicked the cigarette over the balcony edge and then made the same curious wave with her fingers.  When her doors were closed and the curtains pulled he looked down at the asphalt far below and saw the tiny spot of red heat where her cigarette burned in a parking bay.  He watched the glowing ember until it died and then left his flat and took the lift down to the ground floor.  He walked across to the spot where the cigarette had fallen.  He could still feel warmth in the dog end.  Coral pink lipstick coloured the filter, a Marlboro Light.  He put it to his mouth and inhaled ashy air through the yellowed filter.  He looked up at her balcony but the entire building was again a dark monolith.  He gazed into her foyer, the mirror of his own, but it too was lifeless. 
Gerard flicked the ash from the dead filter and placed it in the pocket of his jacket.  He looked up toward his own window and saw two lights glowing, one above the other and in the higher window, a black sentinel watching.
Back in the foyer of his building he frowned into the reflection of the silver doors as he waited for the lift to descend.  The reappearance of the figure in the window troubled him.  As the doors parted he was so startled he took a step back.  Inside the lift stood a man dressed in a charcoal suit of immaculate fit.  His hands were crossed in front at the wrist in the manner of an undertaker.  Gerard took in a pale angular face with ruddy lips that split to smile with perfectly white teeth and eyes that were almost as dark as his shining hair.  Gerard dropped his gaze and took a further step back, muttering an apology as the man glided past with a slight nod. 
As Gerard rode the lift he tried to remember which floor had been illuminated in the numbers above the doors when he had pushed the button to call it.  He was fairly certain it had been the eighth.  So was the man from the flat above?  He had to be, there had been no other lights on, at least not on this side of the building.  For a moment he considered riding down again and looking to see if lights were illuminated on the far side of the block but the thought of encountering the man again filled him with horror and he withdrew his finger from the button.  It couldn’t have been the figure in the window, the watching figure, he couldn’t possibly have made it out of the flat, along the corridor and then called the lift and have it come to him in the time it had taken Gerard to enter the building and make his way across the foyer. 
Back in his flat Gerard stared at the ceiling, listening.  He could hear nothing.
The following day was spent trying to work out the running order for the album, playing through numerous variations, all of which seemed somehow wrong.  At lunch time he walked to a bistro and over a newspaper ate carbonara.  There was a report of disappearances among the homeless community.  The journalist hinted at the possibility of a serial killer and Gerard found himself wondering about the man with the supermarket trolley.  Was he ok?  After eating he returned to his flat to resume work.  He was so close to completing the record that the sight of the peak he had been scaling for so long drove him onward, but despite his motivation he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman from the night before.  On a couple of occasions he took the filter from his pocket and held it under his nose, trying to capture some hint of her scent.  Eventually he cast it into the gutter, ashamed of what he was doing.
When he got back to his apartment he found an envelope behind the door.  Despite the typewritten name and address in a clear window it had no stamp or postmark.  The letter within was from a law firm and offered a price for his flat £300,000 higher than he had paid.  Though prices were creeping ever higher Gerard knew this was an exceptional amount.  The letter concluded with the words, ‘We strongly urge you to take advantage of our generous offer.’  Gerard decided that rather than throw it away as he had the previous communication, he would file this one.  It was not that he was interested in the price, it was the vaguely threatening tone, the unnecessary adverb and the fact that it had been delivered to his door rather than his mail box that made him think it might be wise to retain it.
That night when darkness fell he went out for a cigarette.  She was there in culottes and a Breton top.  He waved and she moved her fingers.  They gazed into one another’s eyes and then, laying his cigarette in the ashtray, Gerard went back into the apartment, returning with an A4 pad and black marker pen. 
‘ALONE?” he wrote and held up the sign. 
She nodded.
He wrote again.
‘DRINK?’ 
            For a moment she stared across the gulf, her expression hardening to a frown.  Very slowly she shook her head and then turned and went inside, closing her windows and pulling her curtains without looking back.
The following evening Gerard played a gig in Brixton.  The attendance at his shows was improving and half way through the set he looked down and saw her standing near the stage, gazing up, her eyes luminescent grey, glittering like ice in the darkness.  It was the first time he had seen her at such close quarters but there was no mistaking her.  She was even more attractive than he had realised.  There were two small curved scars on the right of her face, one next to her eye, the other by her mouth.  When the set finished he put his guitar aside and climbed down from the stage where he was greeted by fans who wished to congratulate him, to shake hands, touch him for a moment.  By the time he had pushed his way through the crowd she was gone.
He drove home watching the pavements, thinking she might have walked.  Passing along Nine Elms Lane Gerard noticed a shopping trolley abandoned at the side of the road.  It was piled high with blankets and junk.  He slowed, looking for the tramp, but he was nowhere to be seen.  He considered stopping but was so tired that he decided instead to call the police when he got home.  Indeed he was so tired that after he had parked his van he decided to leave his keyboard and guitar in the back and pick them up the following morning.  One of the reasons he had bought the near impregnable vehicle was for the security it afforded.  There were more cars parked between the buildings than usual, at least five, all of them black or grey.  As he walked across the white lined tarmac he gazed up but there were no lights on.  Neither were any lights burning in the opposite block, but when he walked out onto his balcony ten minutes later she was there.  The lights in the apartment behind her were not switched on.  He raised his hand but she did not respond and instead held up a piece of A4 paper.  In bold black lettering she had spelled the word ‘LEAVE’. 
He frowned, lit a cigarette and shrugged theatrically.  She pointed down to the car park.  A lorry was pulled up outside the entrance to his building.  Two men were emerging from the back, struggling with a container, taking great care to keep it horizontal.  It was the length and width of a coffin.  Once it was off the truck they disappeared inside and another man appeared from the direction of the foyer to stand guard at the truck.  A short while later two men appeared again, Gerard could not be sure if they were the same ones, and removed another identical box from the lorry.  He continued to stare down and was about to extinguish his cigarette when the man who had been guarding the truck looked up.  Gerard froze, a knot in his throat, a chill of ice forming in his belly.  There had been no hesitation in the man’s focus, he had looked directly up to Gerard’s balcony and into his eyes.  The guard must have said something for his two companions carrying the box had stopped and were now also looking up.  Gerard found himself caught in the crossbeam of their stares.  He raised a feeble hand not knowing what else to do.  None of the men responded.  Gerard stepped back from the balcony’s edge breathing quickly, thoughts flickering through his brain.  What were they doing?  Who were they?  What was in the boxes?  Where were they taking them?  What had the woman meant?  Leave?  The cigarette end burned his fingers and he twisted it out in the ashtray.
He went to the door of his apartment and listened but there were no sounds from outside.  After a minute he opened it a crack and looked out.  The corridor was deserted and no sound was coming from the lift shaft.  He edged out, making sure the door didn’t shut behind him, and padded down the corridor.  He watched the lights above the closed doors but the lift remained on the ground floor.  After a couple of minutes he opened the door to the fire escape and peered down the stairwell.  Nothing.  He moved back into the corridor.  The lift hadn’t moved.  Had they finished unloading?  He thought not.  It was a large lorry and they could only have just started when he looked down.  So where were the boxes going?  They couldn’t be stacking them in the foyer, there wasn’t enough room and the time between them entering the building and reappearing meant they must be transporting them somewhere within.  Perhaps there was a service lift.  It must be gym equipment or furniture, but why were the boxes the same size?  His curiosity overcame his unease.  He decided to find out what was going on.  He could pretend he was fetching something from his own van, could even offer to help.  He pressed the button to call the lift.
When the doors slid open the man in the dark suit stood filling the space.  Gerard retreated a step and the man’s red lips parted in a sharp white smile.  He stepped out of the lift.
“Mr Hawkins,” he said, his accent eastern European.  “May I have a word?”
Gerard took another step back.
“Me?”
The man nodded, stepping after Gerard.
“Perhaps we could talk in your apartment,” he said gesturing to Gerard’s door.  “I have offer to make to you.  Very good offer.”
Gerard stopped.  He was now only yards from his apartment and as he reached for his keys he remembered that he had left the door open.
“Out here’s ok,” he said.  “Bit of a mess inside.”  He tried to laugh and the man smiled and nodded.  “So what’s the offer?”
            “An offer for you.  We will give you new apartment, much bigger than this, view of Thames and so on, much nicer.  More value.  We will give you a life…”  He held out his hands as though unable to complete his sentence. 
“A life?”
The man took another step forward.
“In exchange for your apartment.  Very simple.  We take care of everything.”
Gerard retreated a step, his back almost at the door.
“We?”
“My colleagues, my organisation.”
“Why?”
The man shrugged, smiled again.
“This building is for us.  The realtor make mistake.  Big mistake.  You should never have this apartment.  It is not your mistake.  We want to compensate you.  Handsomely.”  He seemed pleased with his choice of words.  “This is very lucky day for you Mr Hawkins.”
“And if I say no?”
The man smiled again, wider now, showing his teeth, the redness of his mouth.
“Very unlucky.”
Although he was scared Gerard hated bullies.  He’d been bullied at school and had learned to resist.  He pushed open the door to his apartment.
“Let me think about it.”
The man shook his head.
“No time Mr Hawkins.  This once a life opportunity.  You decide now.  I strongly urge you…”
“Then it’s no,” Gerard said, stepping inside and slamming the door.  He leaned back against the wood and listened over the soft panting of his own breath. The man’s shoes made no sound on the carpet but after a few minutes the lift hummed as it began its descent. 
Gerard sank to his knees laughing.  He’d done it.  He’d stood up to the man, stood up to him despite his charming eyes and the soothing tone of his voice, despite his own fear, all persuading him to accept, to acquiesce.  This was his apartment, a symbol of his good fortune.  Everything that was working now with his music seemed bound up in it.  He wasn’t going to give it up just like that. 
But what now?  What could they do, whoever ‘they’ were?
He lit a cigarette.  After checking the front door was secure he walked to the balcony.  The lorry had gone, not that Gerard noticed, what he saw was his van, the front of which was pouring smoke, flames dancing within the pall.  Gerard’s first rush of anger was consumed by the surge of horror that ran through him when he remembered his equipment, his Syd Barrett guitar, the guitar that he had written all his new songs on would be ashes. 
He tore out of the apartment not thinking to check the corridor.  As he waited for the lift to ascend, watching the numbers light their way, slowly, too slowly, his feet shuffled in a fever of anxiety, wondering whether it might be quicker to take the stairs. 
When the doors began to slide open it occurred to him to step back, the awareness that someone might be waiting for him suddenly dawning.  There was no one there, just the mirror revealing the emptiness of the compartment.  It was only after the doors had slid shut behind him, only when he had turned from his reflection and back towards the door that Gerard realised he was not alone.