His fingers brushed against fabric.
Flattening his body, holding his breath, the boy pushed himself further inside the gap, plucking at this object, teasing it towards him. When he got his fist around it he knew he had the handle of a canvas bag, and pulled back with all his strength. The bag was heavy but he could hold it.
Elated for a second, he tried to move back out of the gap but he was stuck. He pulled again, still didn’t move and started to panic. He thought of his sister, with Bateman and their mother in the car. He thought of the prisoner crying beneath the stairs. In a rush of anger, the boy screamed, wrenching himself free from the space and collapsing into a gap between the floorboards. He heard the buckling sound of plaster, breaking beneath his weight. As he started to move it gave way and he fell through, down on to the landing. He hit the floor hard, still holding on to the bag, trying to breathe as splinters and plasterboard hazed down on top of him.
He rolled over, spat the wood shavings out of his mouth and got up. He half-fell down the stairs, coughing, gripping the bag to his chest, keeping his back to the kitchen, the three dead bodies. He put his hand on the latch of the front door and started to open it when he heard the voice from under the stairs again.
‘Tracy?’
The person was crying. The boy thought, once again, of his sister. He thought that when he walked out, they’d leave. Bateman would start the car and they’d be lost in the endless, looping backroads, impossible to follow and never coming back. He felt the electricity in the tips of his fingers, still gripping the latch. The blood thumping through his ears.
He understood that this was a decision.
He made up his mind and moved before he could change it. He went back to the door under the stairs and felt for the key. He turned it all the way, as far as it would go, until he heard the unmistakable click of a lock opening. Then he went back to the front door, opened it and ran.
* * *
VI
Wolf Like Me
1
It was five in the morning and we were watching a house on a quiet terraced street in Rusholme. The phone number found in the smiling man’s possession had brought us here. There was no answer at the door and, until we knew whose home it was, the only thing to do was wait. Sutty and I had each slept briefly, in shifts, with some unfortunate overlap in the middle where we’d made conversation. He’d expanded on his theory that the world was ending. The heat was an early warning sign, he said. The steam escaping from grates was the city short-circuiting, behind the scenes. Now, in the cramped confines of the car, I watched his morning regime. Dowsing himself in hand sanitizer, his skin cracking, red raw from the alcohol. He dabbed some on to the tip of his index finger and ran it back and forth across his gums.
I wound down the window as his phone started to ring.
‘Yeurgh,’ he said, picking up. He listened intently for a minute. ‘Fuck.’ He recited our location to the person at the other end and hung up.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Uniform have been showing Stromer’s still of Smiley Face to staff at the Midland. Blank looks until the cleaners arrived this morning …’
‘And?’
‘And one of them recognized him. She walked into his room to clean it on Friday night and he rushed to push her back out. We know it was Friday because afterwards he called the front desk to lodge a complaint. Wanted assurances that no one would be walking in on him while the Do Not Disturb sign was up …’
‘Probably soaking his towels in paraffin,’ I said. ‘Do they know who he spoke to from the front desk?’
‘They’re looking into it. But best of all, he still has two days left before checkout …’
‘The Do Not Disturb sign’s still up?’
‘Still up,’ said Sutty, looking at me. ‘He’s staying in room 413, by the way.’
The same room we’d found his body in at the Palace.
‘What’s his name?’ I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice but I was desperate to know.
‘The room’s booked under the name Robert Sole,’ said Sutty.
I thought for a second. ‘R. Sole. Funny.’
A squad car pulled up while we were still talking and Sutty climbed out. ‘Hilarious,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna be there when they break the lock. If anyone turns up here, talk to them. Find out what the fuck’s going on.’ He slammed the door behind him. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d find at the Midland, what the relevance of the room number was.
I passed another slow hour watching the street.
The humidity, which had eased during the night, was coming back with a vengeance, and I was sitting with one leg out of the door when I heard the voice of a child. I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw a little boy coming along the pavement with a woman, his mother I assumed. They were holding hands, speaking quietly to each other, and when they stopped beside the house I’d been watching, I was almost too excited to react.
The woman was a little older than me, with tanned skin and dirty-blond hair. At first glance there was something new-age about her appearance and as she moved I heard the click and rattle of the thick, coloured bracelets on her wrists. The bo-ho image was somewhat undone by her sucking the absolute last drag out of a cigarette, closing her eyes as the tip glowed red. She took it from her mouth, slowly exhaled and looked down at her little boy. She smiled tiredly.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, as gently as I could. The woman took a step back and her expression hardened in a way that surprised me. Like I’d walked in on her naked. The boy disappeared behind her, as though he’d been taught to do so.
I held my hands open.
Tried to look like I hadn’t spent a night sleeping in a car.
‘I’m sorry to surprise you, I’m Detective Constable Aidan Waits.’ I showed her my badge. The boy peered around his mother to look at it, and I was struck by the dark rings circling his eyes. His mother must have noticed this, because she dropped her cigarette and tucked him back behind her. ‘Can I ask if you live at this house?’ The woman frowned, nodded. I was starting to think she looked familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t place her. ‘I’m wondering if you can help with my enquiries …’
‘I doubt it,’ she said impatiently. ‘We’ve been out all night …’ Her voice sounded strange, like she wasn’t quite used to it. I wondered if English was her second language.
‘It’s nothing to do with your home, Ms …’
‘Mrs,’ she said. ‘Amy Burroughs.’
A.
The initial that the book in the smiling man’s case had been signed with.
I tried not to react but I needed more time with them. ‘I have a slightly complicated story to tell you, Mrs Burroughs.’ I smiled at the little boy, who was peering back around her. ‘We might all be more comfortable inside.’
I followed her into a small, brightly coloured hallway, made narrow by the bookcases jammed in either side. Nothing matched, and the furnishings looked like the kind you might find left on a street. The shelves were painted different colours, the ceiling was sky-blue and the walls, what I could see of them, were bright yellow. They were covered with framed pictures, all at different, haphazard heights. These pictures were either of the boy, or childish cartoons which I assumed he’d drawn.
I felt like I was intruding on their private universe.