So in the darkness of the house, the boy ceased to exist. He breathed the shadows into his lungs and ceased to feel. He saw the outline of the stairs and in three steps he was standing at the bottom, about to climb, when he sensed something like a breath on his skin. There was a cool breeze coming down the hallway towards him. He retracted his foot from the staircase, moved around the bannister and walked towards the draught. The carpet was so thick that he didn’t need to worry about his footsteps. He walked on the balls of his feet instinctively, though, because Bateman had shown him how. When he reached the room at the end of the hall, the door was partly closed. Almost in wonder at the force that moved his hand, in awe of the motion that disobeyed Bateman, the boy edged it open. He felt the air against his face and was suddenly afraid.
He was standing at the entrance of a large kitchen, whose windows looked out into a field. He knew this because of a faint light coming from outside, the kind that makes everything else seem darker. Because the shadows had gone through him so thoroughly, the boy found himself helplessly drawn to this light, and took a step forward, feeling the shards of broken glass crunching underfoot. His senses came alive and he smelt something familiar and metallic, an odour that registered in his brain as fear itself.
In the centre of the room, in shadow against the light, sat an impossibility. The motionless shape of an open-necked person. Reversing out of the room, towards the wall, the boy felt something hard press into the back of his head. A light switch. Feeling the shake in his hand, he reached behind himself and placed two slippery fingers on it.
Just a second, he thought. On and off.
It would change his life forever.
The room lit up with the exhaustive detail of a nightmare. The kitchen windows had been blown in. Sparkling shards of glass covered the work surfaces, the table, the floor. A thick, electric-red liquid cast crazy patterns on the glass, walls and ceiling, and his eyes swept across a gun on the table. There were two large, sack-like objects on the floor. Taking a step closer the boy saw that they were the fallen bodies of two men.
It felt like his heart was punching out through his chest.
The smell was overpowering now. In the centre of the room sat the impossible person. A young black woman, looking somehow pale. She was tied to a chair and her neck had been cut almost in half, spilling her blood, her life, all over the room. The boy saw in a flash that his mother was right about the afterlife. There was no heaven or God or anything like that. He recognized the metallic odour as that of his mother’s bad breath. The blood-spray smelt like the lapsed fillings in her mouth. He flicked the light off again, feeling like he’d been swallowed whole by her.
Everything went black.
* * *
V
Came Back Haunted
1
‘You’re a flat tyre, Marcus,’ said Sutty, winding down. ‘There’s no bouncing back from this. I’m just glad we found that condom wrapper. I’d hate to think I’m gonna see that face again on someone else.’ We were in one of the boxes beneath the station, sweating Marcus Collier. Sutty had been talking, shouting, pacing up and down, uninterrupted, for fifteen minutes straight, when he finally left a pause long enough to get a reply.
It was like watching a small animal step into a trap.
‘Are you finished?’ said Collier, staring at the table.
‘No,’ Sutty replied. ‘Now I hear it, I don’t like the sound of your voice, either.’
‘… All I did was get laid.’
‘And that’s all you’ll be doing for the next five years,’ said Sutty, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘Why d’ya think they call it Strangeways? There are blokes inside who’ll take a different kind of virginity off you every night. It won’t be their eyes they’re undressing you with, either.’
Collier tried to ignore him. ‘Is this necessary?’ he said, appealing to me. ‘Is it? I’ve told you what I know.’
Sutty leaned over him. ‘For the purposes of this conversation, Aidan’s your imaginary friend, pal. Ignore me again and I’ll high-five your face.’
It wasn’t strictly necessary but, then, Collier hadn’t strictly cooperated. We’d begun, reasonably enough, by asking him to tell us about Cherry, the escort we suspected to have been in the Palace at the time of the unidentified man’s death. Collier had stared at the table and folded his arms.
Then the pyrotechnics started.
It was less an interrogation of him than a form of therapy for Sutty. When the storm clouds were hanging over his head, he’d often disappear into an interview room and make it rain on someone else. Collier’s flawless cooperation wouldn’t have changed that.
I almost admired Sutty’s self-knowledge.
The first person he spoke to on any given day would invariably take the brunt of his rage, he knew this, and had quickly tired of exhausting it on me. Increasingly, I collected him for our shifts in total silence. I knew he was holding it in, waiting to spit venom at someone he could actually break, so I kept my mouth shut and felt quietly grateful when his attention went elsewhere. It could be the girl in the coffee shop, a cold-caller or a mugger, and when he was sweating someone, the crime itself had no bearing on his mood. I’d once seen him reduce a speeder to tears and then, with the thunder out of his system, charm a wife-beater with impeccable politeness. Like a stopped clock, even Detective Inspector Peter Sutcliffe got it right occasionally, and there was a certain thrill in seeing him chew people out who deserved it. It took steel for Collier to run girls out of his own workplace. More importantly, the key card that allowed the smiling man access to room 413 had belonged to him.
‘I’ll appeal,’ said Collier, meeting Sutty’s eyes. ‘This is harassment.’ Occasionally we reached this point. Insults became the new normal and people got brave. This only served to fuel Sutty’s anger, propelling him to new heights of cruelty.
He leaned over the table again and lowered his voice. ‘Allow me to explain why you couldn’t get hate mail from appeals.’
My phone started to vibrate. An unrecognized number. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. When I closed the door behind me, Sutty was screaming at Collier, and I walked up the corridor before answering.
‘Waits,’ I said.
‘Aidan.’
‘Sian?’
‘You sound surprised …’ She laughed. ‘You deleted my number, didn’t you?’
‘I lost my old phone,’ I said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘What’s up?’
‘I think we need to talk.’
I looked down the corridor. ‘I’m afraid it’s not a great time.’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘I just mean I’m at work.’
‘Bit early for you, isn’t it? On the up, are we?’
‘Try the other direction. We’ve caught a bad one. We’re interviewing someone now, listen.’ I held my phone up towards the interview room I’d left. Sutty was describing Collier’s demise in biblical terms.
‘He hasn’t changed,’ said Sian.
‘I don’t know, sometimes I think he’s getting worse.’ I hesitated for a second. ‘I could see you later …’
‘I’m working tonight.’
‘I don’t mind, I could drop in.’
There was a moment’s silence. I thought she’d been disconnected but when I heard a breath I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Ricky and some friends might be around, though.’
‘Ricky? The new guy?’
‘My boyfriend, Aidan …’
‘Well,’ I said, somehow unable to back down. ‘That’s fine by me, I’d love to meet him.’
‘You’d love to?’ She laughed again. ‘OK. Later then. Hope your old phone turns up.’ She disconnected before I could say goodbye and I rubbed my eyes. I had deleted her number, to stop myself from calling at one, or two, or three, in the morning. To stop myself from wasting her time while I was getting straight. That was simply uncomfortable. Inviting myself to meet her new boyfriend was excruciating.
I was grateful for the distraction when my phone buzzed with an email. I’d spent the morning trying to identify the biker who might have seen the dustbin flamer. Unfortunately, he’d turned off Oxford Road without exhibiting any traceable characteristics. As a last resort, I’d requested the footage from further up the road, to see if I could find the start of his journey. That footage was now available.
I looked up and saw two uniformed officers lingering in the hallway, listening to Sutty’s latest rant and laughing.
‘Find somewhere else to be,’ I said. Their faces fell and they moved along. I waited outside for another minute and, with the worst of the tirade over, opened the door and stepped back inside the box.