The Only Witness

The gunshots weren't the worst part of this neighbourhood. The worst part was knowing nobody intended to do anything about them.

I'd called the police after every incident. They filled out their reports, drove slowly through the neighbourhood once or twice, and moved on. Nothing ever changed.

The gangs weren't even shooting at one another anymore. They were only making noise, reminding everyone they were still there.

Sleep wasn't coming tonight.

I sat beside my third-storey window and watched rubbish skitter along the moonlit street. Across the road, half the apartments were dark. Another family had left that morning, stuffing everything they owned into the back of a rusted van.

Something moved along the fire escape.

A kitten crept along the railing toward my window. It was tiny, all sharp ears and smoke-grey fur, with one white paw that flashed whenever it stepped into the moonlight.

I slid the window open a few centimetres and held out my hand.

"Hello, little thing."

It answered with a meow, squeezed through the gap and climbed straight into my lap. It turned twice before settling against my stomach as though it had always belonged there.

"You're awfully friendly for something living in such a dangerous place."

Talking to a kitten as if it understood me felt ridiculous. Still, it was nice having someone to talk to, even if that someone had whiskers and probably only wanted food.

I scratched beneath its chin and looked back towards the street.

A man stood beneath the broken streetlight on the opposite footpath.

He was watching me.

From three-storeys above, I couldn't make out his face, but I felt the weight of his stare. The kitten stiffened in my lap.

The man tilted his head, then raised one arm.

Moonlight caught against something in his hand.

The window exploded.

There was a flash, a violent pressure inside my chest... then nothing.

I woke to something rough scraping across my cheek.

"Stop," I mumbled.

The scratching continued.

I opened my eyes, the kitten stood over me, one tiny paw passing backwards and forwards through my face.

Through my face.

I jerked upright.

The kitten sprang away, back arched and fur standing on end. It stared at me and released a low, furious hiss.

"What is wrong with you?"

My voice sounded distant, as though it had travelled through to the end of a tunnel before returning to me.

Then I saw the broken window.

The blood across the floor.

And the woman lying beneath it.

She wore my pajamas. She had my hair. Her hand rested palm-up beside her head, fingers curled towards the ceiling.

The kitten had crept to the body and touched its little white paw to her fingertips.

To my fingertips.

Metal groaned outside the window.

Someone was climbing the fire escape.

The kitten's head snapped towards the sound. I couldn't feel my heartbeat anymore, but terror still found somewhere inside me to live.

"Hide," I whispered.

The kitten darted beneath the sofa as a hand curled over the windowsill.

The man climbed inside, brushing glass from the shoulders of a dark jacket. This close, the weak light found his face.

Officer Quinn.

He had taken my last three statements. He had stood in my kitchen, accepting a cup of coffee while I played him recordings of the gunshots.

'We're doing everything we can,' he had said.

Apparently, everything included murder.

He courched beside my body and pressed two fingers to my throat. I lunged for him. My hands passed through his chest, leaving nothing but a ripple in the fabric of his jacket.

Quinn shivered.

"Feel that?" I demanded. "That was me, you bastard."

He couldn't hear me. Beneath the sofa, the kitten chirped in reply.

Quinn looked towards the sound. "Come here."

The kitten retreated deeper into the shadows.

"Good," I whispered. "Don't trust police officers who climb through windows."

Quinn pulled out his phone.

"It's done," he said. He listened, eyes fixed on my body. "No, she didn't have time to call again."

He crossed to my desk and began pulling open drawers.

"I'll find the recordings. You get the van ready. We'll put her in the alley behind Harrow Street. Everyone will assume it was the gangs."

The truth rearranged itself inside me.

The reports he had dismissed. The drive-bys that never found anyone. The sudden inspections, the eviction notices, the offers pushed beneath our door to buy us out for almost nothing. I had thought the gunfire was driving people away by accident.

It had been the point.

Quinn tucked my laptop beneath his arm, then found my phone beside the chair. He checked the screen before sliding it into his pocket.

"You won't find anything," I said.

I had recorded every shooting, but I had already sent the files to the police. To him. He could delete them before anyone realised they mattered.

Quinn swept the papers from my desk into a rubbish bag. My copies of the reports disappeared inside it one after another.

Then I saw a faint square of light beneath the old box aircon.

My old phone.

I'd balanced it against the window that evening, recording the street while I tried to catch the shooters on camera. The kitten must have knocked it down when the glass shattered. It had slid beneath the aircon, still filming.

Quinn hadn't seen it.

Yet...

I dropped to my knees beside the sofa. The kitten watched me with enormous green eyes.

"I need your help."

It licked one paw.

I pointed towards the glow beneath the aircon.

"See the light?"

The kitten's gaze followed my hand. It crept from under the sofa, belly low to the floor.

Quinn was in my bedroom, emptying drawers.

The kitten pounced on the light.

Its paw struck the phone, pushin git further beneath the aircon.

"The other way."

It pounced again.

The phone scraped against the wall.

"You're impressively bad at this."

The kitten spun, attacking its own tail.

Quinn returned carrying another bag. He stopped when he saw the middle of the room.

"There you are."

The kitten bolted. Quinn grabbed, but caught only air as it shot behind the curtains.

His shoe landed centimetres from the phone.

I threw myself at him, although I knew it was useless. My body passed through his.

This time the light overhead flickered.

Quinn froze.

So did I.

The bulb steadied.

Quinn glanced around the room before shaking his head. "Faulty wiring."

But I had felt it, the smallest pull, like breath gathering in lungs I no longer had.

I reached for the lamp beside him and concentrated.

Nothing.

The kitten peered from behind the curtain.

I pointed at Quinn's shoelace. "Get him."

It launched itself with far more enthusiasm than it had shown on the phone.

Tiny claws caught his ankle. Quinn swore and kicked out. The kitten skidded across the floor, scrambled upright and disappeared through the open window.

"Leave it," a voice snapped from Quinn's phone.

He had never ended the call.

"I know," he replied. "I'm cleaning up your mess aren't I?"

My old phone remained beneath the aircon, its camera quietly preserving every word.

Quinn dragged my body across the floor towards the door.

The back of my head struck the floorboards once. Twice.

Rage surged through me. The lights went out.

Quinn released my wrists.

In the sudden darkness, the old phone glowed like a beacon.

He saw it.

"No."

I flung myself towards the aircon. I couldn't touch the phone. I couldn't hide it. I couldn't do anything except watch Quinn drop to his knees and reach beneath the metal bars.

A grey blur streaked through the window.

The kitten landed on his back.

Quinn shouted as its claws sank through his jacket. He twisted, striking the aircon with his shoulder. The phone spun free across the floor.

The kitten chased it.

One white paw batted it through the broken window.

The phone struck the fire escape and slid between the rails, catching on the level below.

"Good little thing!"

The kitten leapt after it.

Quinn stumbled to the window, blood bright across one cheek. He looked down, then towards my body.

The phone or the corpse.

He chose the phone.

I followed him onto the fire escape.

Below us, the kitten batted the glowing screen along the metal walkway. It wasn’t rescuing evidence. It was hunting a moving light, delighted with itself.

The window at the far end belonged to Mrs Alvarez. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, and she had refused every offer to leave.

Her window was open.

“In there,” I urged. “Please.”

The kitten ignored me and sat down to chew its back foot.

Quinn descended the ladder.

I tried to summon the force I had felt inside the apartment. The fire-escape light flickered once, but the kitten didn’t look up.

Quinn stepped onto the landing.

I screamed.

No sound reached him, but every light on the side of the building burst at once.

The kitten sprang sideways, knocking the phone through Mrs Alvarez’s open window.

It clattered onto her kitchen tiles.

A light came on inside.

“What on earth?” Mrs Alvarez appeared in a blue dressing-gown, holding a wooden spoon like a weapon. She looked from the phone to the kitten perched on her windowsill.

Then she saw Quinn on the fire escape.

“Police,” he said quickly. “Stay inside.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you outside my window?”

“There’s been an incident.”

Mrs Alvarez looked past him, towards my shattered window one floor above. Quinn moved to block her view.

The phone continued recording on the floor between them.

The kitten slipped into the kitchen, planted its white paw on the screen and turned the volume up.

Quinn’s recorded voice filled the room.

"We’ll put her in the alley behind Harrow Street. Everyone will assume it was the gangs."

For one long second, nobody moved.

Mrs Alvarez lifted her own phone from the bench.

Quinn reached through the window.

She struck his hand with the wooden spoon.

“Help!” she screamed, backing into the hallway. “There’s a man with a gun on the fire escape!”

Doors opened throughout the building.

Quinn climbed through the window, but the kitten darted between his feet. He stumbled and crashed into the kitchen table. Mrs Alvarez fled into the corridor, still shouting into her phone.

Quinn pushed himself up.

Then he saw me.

Not through me. Not past me.

At me.

Perhaps terror thinned the distance between us. Perhaps the dead became visible when the guilty knew exactly who had come to collect their debt.

His face drained of colour.

“You,” he whispered.

I stepped closer.

Every cupboard door in the kitchen slammed open.

Quinn ran.

He made it as far as the corridor before three neighbours tackled him to the floor. Someone kicked his gun away. Someone else filmed everything. Mrs Alvarez stood over them all, waving her spoon and demanding that the emergency operator send officers Quinn didn’t know.

Sirens rose in the distance.

By the time they reached our street, there were too many witnesses for anyone to make me disappear.

They found my body where Quinn had left it. They found the bags of evidence, my laptop in his bag and the video still playing on the kitchen floor. His accomplice called twice while another officer held the phone.

Dawn softened the sky before they carried me downstairs.

Mrs Alvarez stood on the footpath with the kitten tucked inside her dressing-gown. Its head poked through the collar, eyes half-closed with exhaustion.

“What am I going to do with you?” she murmured.

The kitten purred.

“Silly little thing.”

It opened its eyes and looked straight at me.

“Thank you,” I said.

One white paw stretched towards me before relaxing against Mrs Alvarez’s shoulder.

The first sunlight reached the broken windows of our building. Around me, neighbours gave statements. They showed one another the notices they had received and compared dates, names and threats. For the first time, they weren’t closing their doors and pretending they had heard nothing.

The kitten blinked slowly.

The street faded. The sirens softened. Something warm gathered around me, quiet and weightless.

For the first time since the gunshots began, I knew someone was listening.

I closed my eyes.

And finally, I slept.