But it wasn’t the same. Hugo was getting worse: not the final downslide, not yet, but it was getting close enough that its form was starting to coalesce, we could see the hulking outline of what it would be when it finally stepped out of the shadows. Melissa and I were doing more and more of the cooking—Hugo couldn’t stand for longer than a few minutes, couldn’t grip a knife strongly enough to cut anything tougher than butter, we found ourselves tacitly planning meals (stir-fries, risotto) that wouldn’t force him to sit at the table sawing clumsily away. When Phil called round they didn’t play draughts any more, and it took me longer than it should have to understand why not. There were times when I would become aware that the quiet rhythms of movement from Hugo’s side of the study had stopped, and when I glanced up I would see him staring into space, hands limp on his desk. Once I sat watching him like that for fifteen minutes; when I couldn’t stand it any longer and said, “Hugo?” it took me three tries before he finally turned—infinitely slowly, like someone drugged to the eyeballs—and looked at me with the same incurious, affectless gaze he would have given to a chair or a mug. Finally something switched on in his eyes, he blinked and said, “Yes? Did you find something?” and I came up with some babble, and gradually he found his way back. There were mornings when he came down in the same clothes he had been wearing the day before, crumpled into deep slept-in creases. When one evening I suggested tentatively that maybe I could help him change, he snapped, “Do you think I’m a fool?” and the glare he hit me with—a blast of pure undisguised disgust—shocked me so badly that I stammered something incoherent and buried my face in my book. The excruciating silence went on for what felt like forever before I heard his steps dragging out of the room and up the stairs. I was half afraid to go downstairs the next morning, but he turned from the cooker and smiled as if nothing had happened.
It wasn’t just Hugo. Around him, Melissa was her usual happy self (and even now he never turned on her, with her his voice was always gentle, to the point where I actually found myself getting absurdly jealous); but when my family came over she went quiet, smiling in a corner with watchful eyes. Even when it was just the two of us, there was a subtle penumbra of withdrawal to her. I knew something was bothering her, and I did try to draw it out of her, a couple of times, maybe not as hard as I might have: I wasn’t really in the right form for complex emotional negotiations myself. I was still hitting the Xanax every night and now occasionally during the day, which at this point made it hard to be sure whether my array of resurfacing fuckups—brain fog, smelling disinfectant and blood at improbable moments, a bunch of other predictable stuff way too tedious to go into—was cause or effect, although obviously I had a hard time going for the optimistic view. Hugo and Melissa pretended not to notice. The three of us maneuvered carefully around one another, as though there was something hidden somewhere in the house (landmine, suicide vest) that at the wrong footfall might blow us all to smithereens.
Even though I knew it made no sense, I blamed the detectives. They had ripped through the place like a tornado, questioned us as if we were criminals, thrown us out into the street, all that stress had clearly fucked with my head and it had to have given Hugo a hard shove towards that downslide; they had wandered off and left us with a variety of pretty disturbing questions that they clearly had no intention of bothering their arses to answer; when you came down to it, we had been doing fine before they came, and now we weren’t. They had done something, as yet unclear, to the foundations, and now the whole structure was creaking and twisting around us and all we could do was brace and wait.
* * *
?A week, ten days, and nothing. And then one evening—a cold, gusty evening, Halloween weather, torn leaves tumbling against the windowpanes and thin clouds scudding across a thin moon—there was a knock at the door. I was in the living room, in front of the fire, reading an old Gerald Durrell book that I’d found on a shelf and discovered I could actually follow, since there wasn’t much in the way of plot arc. Melissa was at some trade fair; Hugo had gone to bed straight after dinner. I put down my book and went to the door before whoever it was woke him up.
A torrent of wind hurled itself in and down the hall, knocking something off the kitchen table with a clatter. Detective Martin was on the doorstep, bundled and blowing, shoulders hunched.
“Jaysus,” he said, his face brightening at the sight of me. “The man himself. You’re a hard man to find, Toby, d’you know that?”
“Oh,” I said. It had taken me a moment to recognize him. “Sorry. It’s my uncle’s house—he’s sick, I’m staying here to—”
“Ah, yeah, I know that bit. I’m talking about the road. I’m after spending half the evening going in circles looking for it—and my car’s in the shop. I’ve frozen the knackers off meself.”
“Do you want to come in?”
“Ah, beautiful,” said Martin, heartfelt, heading past me, cold striking off him. “I was hoping you’d say that. Just for a few minutes, thaw out a bit before I head back out into that. In here, yeah?”
He was already halfway into the living room. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.
I was about to offer tea or coffee, but he said cheerfully—shouldering off his coat, nodding at my glass of whiskey on the coffee table—“I’ll join you, yeah, if you’ve got any to spare. Might as well get a silver lining out of the car being down.”
I went to the kitchen and found another glass. My mind was spinning—I know that bit? how had he known that bit? and what was he doing here, anyway? “Lovely gaff,” Martin said, when I got back; he had settled into the armchair nearest the fire and was looking around appreciatively. “My missus likes everything shiny, know what I mean? Lots of chrome, lots of bright colors, everything put away all nice. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, but me, if I was a single man”—he patted the arm of the ratty old damask chair—“I’d be living like this. Or as near as I could get, on my salary.”
I laughed automatically, handing him the glass. He lifted it. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa and reaching for my own glass.
Martin threw back a big gulp and blew out air. “Ahhh. That’s a gorgeous whiskey, that is. Your uncle’s a man of taste.” He had put on a little weight since spring, and cut his hair closer. Ruddy from the cold, legs stretched out to the fire, he looked right at home, some prosperous burgher relaxing after a hard day’s work. I hoped fervently that Hugo wouldn’t pick this moment to wake up and wander downstairs. “How’ve you been keeping?”
“OK. I’ve been taking some time out to look after my uncle.”
“Nice of your boss, giving you the time off. He’s a sound man. Fond of you.”
“It’s not for long,” I said, idiotically.
He nodded. “Sorry to hear that. How’s the uncle doing?”
“As good as he can be, I guess. He’s . . .” The unstrung hands, the void before something behind his eyes came back and found me. The word I was looking for was diminishing, but I couldn’t find it and wouldn’t have used it anyway. “He’s tired.”
Martin nodded sympathetically. “My granddad went the same way. It’s tough, the watching and waiting. It’s a bastard. The only thing I can tell you is, he never had any pain. Just got weaker and weaker, till one morning he collapsed and”—one soft snap of his fingers—“just like that. I know that’s not a lot of comfort, man. But compared to what we were afraid of . . . It could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’re just taking it day by day.”
“That’s all you can do. Come here, before I forget”—groping inside his coat, slung casually over the arm of the chair—“here’s what I came for.” He pulled out a twisted plastic bag and leaned across, with a grunt, to hand it to me.
Inside was Melissa’s cast-iron candlestick. It felt heavier than I remembered, colder and less easy in my hand, as if it were made of some different and unfamiliar substance. I almost asked him if he was sure he had the right one.
“Sorry for the delay,” Martin said, rearranging himself in the armchair and taking another swig of whiskey. “The Tech Bureau’s always backlogged, and something like this—no one died, no suspects on the radar—it’s not going to get priority.”
“Right,” I said. “Did they . . . ? I mean, am I allowed to ask? Did they find anything on it?”
“Ask away; sure, if it’s not your business, whose is it? No prints; you were right about the gloves. Plenty of blood and a few bits of skin and hair, but it was all yours—don’t worry, I had the Bureau give that a good wash.” A small fierce pulse twitched through my scar. I caught myself before I put my hand up to it.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I want to reassure you here, man. This doesn’t mean we’re giving up. Nothing like that. Me, doesn’t matter how long it takes, I clear my cases. New leads come in all the time. And it’s not like these fellas were criminal masterminds.” He grinned, a big hard confident grin. “Don’t you worry: we’ll get them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s good.”
“You all right there? Didn’t mean to open up a can of worms.”
He was watching me over the glass, apparently casually, but I caught the glint of alertness. “Fine,” I said. I wrapped the candlestick back up in the bag and put it on the floor beside me. “Thanks again.”