Chasing the Dead

14

The address that Cary had given me for the Calvary Project was a block of flats called Eagle Heights, about a quarter of a mile east of Brixton Road. On the way over, my phone started ringing, but by the time I’d scooped it up off the back seat I’d missed the call. I slotted the phone in the hands-free and went to my voice messages. It was Cary.

‘Uh, I’ve thought about…’ He paused, sounding different now: less officious than the last time we’d talked. ‘Just give me a call when you get the chance. I’m in this morning until ten, and then after lunch I’m here until four.’

I looked at the clock: 8.43. I tried calling him, but the sergeant said he wasn’t around. Stuck in traffic ten minutes later, I tried again, and the same desk sergeant said he still wasn’t around. I left a message just as Eagle Heights emerged from behind a bank of oak trees.

It was featureless and grey. The concrete walls were marked all the way down, as if the building was rotting from the inside. It was twenty-five storeys high, and flanked by two even bigger blocks of flats on the other side of a ringed fence. At the front entrance, there was a board with Eagle Heights written on it. Someone had spray-painted Welcome to hell underneath.

I parked my BMW next to a battered Golf, its wheels up on blocks and its windows smashed in. Across from me, a bunch of kids who were supposed to be in school were kicking a ball about on a patch of muddy grass. I got out of the car, removed my phone and my pocket knife, and headed for the entrance.

Inside, there were mailboxes on my left, most with nothing in. I checked the slot for number 227: empty. To my right, stairs wound up and around. As I started to climb, a huge metal cage came into view, an air-conditioning unit inside. The higher I climbed, the worse the place started to smell.

The door to the second floor hung off its hinges and the glass had cracked. I pulled it open. Background noise came through from the flats: the buzz of a TV, a woman shouting, the dull thud of a baseline. There were fifteen doors on either side, all painted the same shade of muddy brown. Flat 227 was right at the end.

I knocked twice and waited.

A council notice was nailed to the door. It was almost four years old, and warned people not to enter due to health and safety violations. Some of the sticker had peeled away and the bits that remained were faded.

I knocked again, harder this time.

Further down the corridor, two flats along on the opposite side, I heard the sound of a door opening. Someone peered through the crack, their eyes darting backwards and forwards.

‘Who you lookin’ for?’

It was a man’s voice.

‘The guy who lives here,’ I said. ‘You know him?’

‘Nah.’

‘You seen him around?’

‘What are you, a copper?’

‘No.’

‘Social services?’

‘No.’

I knocked again on the door.

‘You ain’t gonna find nothin’, mate.’

‘How come?’

‘There ain’t no one there.’

I looked at him. ‘Since when?’

‘Since for ever.’

‘No one lives here?’

‘Nope.’

‘You sure?’

‘Am I sure? You can read English, can’t you?’

‘Only if the words aren’t more than three letters.’ I glanced at the council notice. ‘So, the council cleared out the last tenants?’

‘Last tenants? I been in this shithole twenty years. Ain’t no one lived in that flat since the floor gave in. Hole the size of Tower Bridge in there.’ He opened the door a little more. It was a white guy. Unshaven. Old. ‘No one gives a shit about us here, so ain’t no one been round to fix it. Must’ve been five years since it went.’

‘No one’s lived here for five years?’

‘Nope.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes the council come round. Inspecting it, I s’pose. But no one’s lived in there for a long time.’

I started along the corridor towards him. As I got closer he pushed the door shut. I passed his flat, walked out to the landing area, and stood away from the door, out of sight. Then I waited. A couple of minutes passed. Once he was definitely back in his hole, I moved into the corridor and returned to the flat, taking my pocket knife out on the way.

Slipping the blade into the crack between door and frame, I gently started to jemmy it open. The door was damp and warped. There was a curve about two-thirds of the way up. As I worked the blade, I felt some give. I removed some broken slivers of wood and started opening up a hole. Through it some of the interior was brightened by the light from the corridor. Inside it was stark. No carpets. No furniture. No paint on the walls.

More wood started to break, and the further down the door frame I got, the easier it came away. I tried the handle. The door moved in the frame. I glanced along the corridor, then gently used my shoulder to apply some pressure. Sliding the blade back in, this time at the lock, I wriggled it around and pressed again at the door. The wood was incredibly soft, bending against my weight. Finally, it clicked open.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

There were no curtains at the windows, only rectangular sheets of black plastic. Small blocks of light escaped around the edges and on to opposite walls. A kitchen counter was to my left. The room smelt damp but not unpleasant, and the floorboards were dirty. Some were broken. The old man had been wrong, though. There were small holes in the floor, but they didn’t go through to the room below. They went to a concrete support. Some of the floorboards differed in colour to the rest of the flooring and looked as if they had been replaced recently.

I hunted for a light switch and found one a little way along the wall. When I flicked it on, nothing happened. I walked across to the windows, flipped the blade and slashed through the plastic. Morning poured into the room in thick cubes of dust-filled light.

The flat was like a skeleton: every piece of furniture had been removed. There were Coke bottles and empty crisp packets on the kitchen counter. In a small rubbish bin there was an apple core and two sweet wrappers. I picked up one of the crisp packets and turned it over. The expiry date was six months away.

The flat had definitely been used recently.

I looked around. Pinned to the wall was a newspaper cutting, curled at the edges. BOY, 10, FOUND FLOATING IN THE THAMES. Parts of the story had been underlined in red pen. I stepped in closer: 13 April 2002. It was nearly eight years old.

I walked to the bedrooms. Both were empty, dust on the floorboards and paint blistering on the walls. The windows had also been covered in black plastic sheeting. The third door led to the bathroom. The bath was filthy, mould climbing up the sides and around the taps, spreading like a disease across the enamel. Tiles were cracked and missing, and bits of tile were in the bath. The sink was cleaner, though, and there was a bar of soap on it, tiny bubbles on its surface. It had been lathered recently.

Back in the kitchen, I checked through the cupboards. Two saucepans. A frying pan. Both had been washed. In another drawer I found washing-up liquid. Cornflakes. Matches. Cutlery. Orange juice. In the smallest drawer, right at the bottom, was a notepad. Nothing written on it. I took it anyway.

I ran my fingers along the underside of the units, then climbed on to them and looked on top of the cupboards. They hadn’t been cleaned since they’d been put in. The dirt was an inch thick.

The flat was obviously used as a base of some sort; a hiding place. Maybe Alex had even hidden here for a time. No one would live here. Not in conditions like this. There weren’t enough provisions and utensils for anyone to stay full-time. But as a place to disappear, it was ideal. The old man thought it was the council he’d heard — but it wasn’t them.

I glanced at the slashed plastic sheeting and the jemmied lock, and realized they’d know someone had been here. But it was too late to worry about that now. Whoever owned this place wasn’t making contact with the neighbours and it was unlikely they were paying rent or rates. Any break-in was going to go unreported.

Then, suddenly, a telephone started ringing.

I stood completely still in the middle of the room, trying to figure out if it was coming from inside the flat. When I realized it was, I followed the sound through to the bedrooms.

I checked the first one over. Nothing.

In the second, the noise got louder. At the bottom of one of the walls was a phone jack, a small wire running up and out of it, disappearing behind one of the black sheets. I stabbed my knife into it and tore away the plastic. On the windowsill was a cordless phone with a digital display, sitting in a recharging cradle.

The ringing stopped.

I picked up the phone and looked at the display. LAST CALL: NUMBER WITHHELD. In the options menu, there were no names in the address book. Nothing on the ‘recent calls’ list. No messages on the voicemail. I punched in my own mobile number, and pressed ‘Call’. A couple of seconds later, my phone started buzzing. On the display: PRIVATE. So, the landline’s withheld as well. I deleted my number from the ‘recent calls’ list, and placed their phone back in the cradle. The fact that there was nothing on it — no history, no record of anything — meant either it was brand new, or they wiped it clean after every use.

It was time to go.

I went to the windows in the living room, trying to see if there was any way to reconnect the sheeting. There wasn’t.

Then I caught sight of something else: two floors down, a man was standing next to my car, a mobile phone in his hands. The handset was flipped open, as if he’d just been using it.

The caller.

He leaned forward, cupped his hands to the glass and peered through the window into the front seat. He didn’t move for a long time. Then he straightened up, took in the full length of the car and looked up towards the flat. I stepped back from the window. Waited. Checked my watch thirty seconds later. When I looked again, he was gone.

I made sure I still had the notepad I’d pocketed earlier, and moved to the door, opening it a fraction. I peered through the gap.

The man was already inside the doors at the end of the corridor.

Shit — he’s coming to the flat.

I pushed the door gently shut and backed up against the wall, just to the side of the hinge. Gripping the knife, I listened for his footsteps. Then the door started opening.

Hesitation.

It opened further, but not the whole way. Through the slit between door and frame, I could see his face. He had a thick scar running towards the corner of his lips, which seemed to extend his mouth. He took another step forward. All I could see now was the back of his head. Another inch forward. His foot came into view at the bottom of the door.

‘Vee?’ he said quietly.

He took a step back.

‘Vee?’

Another step.

It was so quiet in the flat now, I was sure he could hear me breathing.

He backed up another step and, before I realized what was happening, a thin sliver of face was filling the gap between door and frame — and his eyes were moving from the knife in my hand, up to my face.

Suddenly, we were eye to eye either side of the door.

A heartbeat later, he ran.

When I got out into the corridor, the doors at the end were already swinging open and he was out of them. I sprinted after him, taking the stairs two at a time, adjusting the knife so the tip of the handle faced down and the blade pointed towards my elbow. When I got to the bottom, he was looking back over his shoulder, heading out across the grass to where a length of metal fencing separated the buildings from the road. He looked younger than me, twenty-two or twenty-three. I’d run a lot since Derryn had died, pounding out the frustration and the anger, but at his age he would be naturally fitter. It was unlikely I could catch him on a straight run.

Then the chase swung in my favour.

The kids I’d spotted earlier had moved their game of football further up, closer to the flats. As he looked around again, one of the kids ran across in front of him. The two of them collided. The kid went spinning, almost pirouetting on the spot, before collapsing to the floor. The man tried to avoid him but failed, falling over him, his body hitting the floor hard. For a couple of seconds, he was dazed. He scrambled on to all fours, on to his feet, then his shoes slipped in the mud.

He went down again.

As I came at him, he jabbed a boot up into my stomach. I staggered backwards, losing my footing, but managed to cling on to his coat. I pulled him towards me. He jabbed at me again with a foot, catching the side of my face. The impact stunned me for a moment. I dropped the knife. Blinked. Tried to refocus. He looked between me, the knife and the fencing. The tiny delay worked in my favour: I grasped the front of his coat and landed a punch in the side of his head.

He pushed back and grabbed my arm, trying to snap it. Wriggling free, I pumped a fist at his face, and missed. Then did it again. He rolled to the left, my fist slapping against the ground, then used my weight transfer to push me off. When I swivelled to face him again, he was already on his feet, caked in mud.

‘Stop!’ I shouted.

But he didn’t stop. By the time I was on my feet again, he had made it to the metal fence, then dropped to his knees and quickly crawled through a gap. As he stood up, safe on the other side, he pulled up the hood on his jacket so I couldn’t see his face properly, and jogged away.

I got to the fencing and pressed against it. He was halfway along a narrow alleyway that led from the opposite side of the road, moving more slowly now to prevent himself from losing his footing again. Puddles were scattered around him, reflecting the sky. I watched him all the way to the end. When he got there, he stopped and looked back at me.

Then he disappeared for good.

On my way back to the car, about twenty feet from where the kids were playing football, I spotted something: a mobile phone. Mud was caked to it, the display face down, wet grass matted to the casing. I knelt, picked it up and wiped it clean. As soon as I unlocked the keypad, it erupted into life. I hit ‘Answer’.

On the phone: silence. Then the sound of cars in the background.

‘You’re gonna wish you hadn’t picked that up,’ a voice said.

I paused. Stood. I could see my knife about six feet across the grass from me. I walked over and scooped it up, then glanced towards the fence, back to the flats and out to the main road again.

I was being watched.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yeah, I heard you,’ I replied, and looked around again. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

‘You just made a big mistake.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve made them before.’

‘Not like this.’ The line crackled and hissed. ‘Listen to me: you get back in your car and you drive back to wherever the fuck it is you’re from, and you forget about everything you’ve found. You don’t ever come out of your hole again. Is that clear?’

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the display. Another withheld number. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

‘Is that clear?’

‘What’s the Calvary Project?’

‘Is that clear?’

‘Where’s Alex Towne?’

‘You’re not listening to me, David.’

I stopped. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘One chance.’

‘How the fuck do you know my name?’

‘This is your one chance.’

Then the line went dead.

15

The restaurant overlooked Hyde Park. At the windows were a series of booths, dressed up like an American diner, with mini jukeboxes on the tables playing Elvis on rotation. Above me on the wall was a clock showing 10.40, Mickey Mouse’s arms pointing to the ten and the eight. Three booths along were a French couple and, beyond them, a group of kids eating toast and jam. Apart from that, the place was empty.

On the table in front of me, I had the pad I’d taken from the apartment and the mobile phone I’d picked up off the grass outside. Just like the phone in the flat, there were no contact numbers in the address book, nothing on the ‘recent calls’ list and no saved messages. Maybe they’d never used it. Or maybe they really did wipe it clean after every use.

A waitress came over carrying my breakfast. An omelet, some toast and lots of coffee. She set it down and wandered off again. I loved coffee, sometimes even lived off it. It was probably as close as I got to an addiction. Food didn’t appeal to me in the same way as it had once, mainly because eating on your own wasn’t fun, but also because I’d become lazy during marriage. Derryn had been an incredible cook, and it had been safer, and tastier, for us both if she made the meals. Since she’d been gone, I tried to have a good breakfast and then usually didn’t worry too much about lunch. Maybe a sandwich from a packet, or a salad in a tub. Always a coffee. In the evenings, I ate small and late, usually in front of the news or watching something on DVD.

I filled my mug and, while I waited for the food to cool, started going through the phone again. Dropping it had been a mistake, but a mistake they could probably live with. There was nothing on it that would lead back to them. No incriminating evidence. No numbers. Nothing traceable. But whatever their connection to Alex, they were still warning me off something. Perhaps I was close, perhaps I wasn’t, but it was clear I’d made some inroads.

I pulled the pad towards me.

When I’d been inside the flat, the light from the windows had been shining across the surface of the paper. It had highlighted the scars and grooves left from notes that had been made on previous sheets. I asked the waitress for a pencil and gently rubbed the tip of it across the pad. Slowly, words started to emerge. In the top right: Must phone Vee. In the middle, lighter and less defined, a series of names: Paul. Stephen. Zack. Towards the bottom, barely even legible until I held it right up to the window, was a telephone number.

I picked up my phone and dialled it.

Eventually, someone answered. ‘Angel’s, Soho.’

I waited, could hear people talking in the background.

‘Is this Angel’s pub?’

‘Yeah.’

I waited some more, then hung up.

I gave directory enquiries the number, and they told me the address that was listed for it. It was a pub on the edge of Chinatown. But I knew that even before I’d made the call. During my apprenticeship, I was paired with an old guy called Jacob, an experienced reporter who covered the City. Angel’s was his local at the time. He stopped going a couple of years later, after retiring to the Norfolk countryside.

But I didn’t.

I continued going right the way up until Derryn got ill.

My car was on the other side of the park. I entered at Hyde Park Corner and headed towards the Serpentine. Everything was quiet. The trees were skeletal and bare; the water in the lake dark and still. The only movement on its surface were two model boats, gliding and drifting, their sails catching the wind. I carried on walking, taken in by the smell and sounds of the place; of the grass covered by a blanket of fallen leaves; of the oaks and elms stripped bare as winter approached.

Kids ran across in front of me, their muddy footprints a reminder of where they’d been and how often. Their parents watched from the side: chatting, laughing, their breath drifting away. It made me ache with loneliness. I remembered the times Derryn and I had talked about wanting a family, about what it would be like to hold our baby for the first time, or walk, hand in hand, with our son or daughter to school. We’d been trying for fifteen months when she got cancer, and — after that — we never got to try again.

Sometimes I remembered the sense of finality as I watched her coffin being lowered into the ground. The feeling that there was no doubt any more; she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. I knew, deep down, there was no way Alex could have died in that car crash and still be alive, in the same way I knew there was no way Derryn could be. Yet, when I looked in Mary’s eyes, I only saw conviction there, so lucid, as if she had no doubt in what she was telling me. And I knew a small part of me wanted her to be right. I wanted Alex to be alive, however impossible it seemed. And the need to find out was driving me on, and, at least temporarily, helping me forget the loneliness.

After days of heavy skies and biting winds, snow finally started falling as I got back to the car. I climbed in, put the heaters on full blast and started scrolling through the numbers on my mobile. When I got to the one I wanted, I hit ‘Call’.

‘Citizens Advice Bureau.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, come on.’

‘Who’s that?’ the voice said.

‘Citizens Advice?’

‘David?’

‘Yeah. How you doing, Spike?’

‘Man, it’s been ages.’

We chatted for a while, catching up. Spike lived in Camden Town and was the dictionary definition of illegal: a Russian hacker on an expired student visa running a cash-only information service out of his flat. During my days on the newspaper, when I still cared about naming and shaming politicians, I used him a lot.

‘So, what can I do you for you, man?’

He spoke that form of American-influenced English that a lot of Europeans used, picked up by watching hours of music videos and TV shows.

‘I need you to fire up the super computer.’

‘Course I can. What you got?’

‘A mobile phone — I want to find out who it belongs to. It’s got no numbers on it, no address book. If I gave you the serial number and the SIM, could you find out where the phone was bought — maybe who it’s registered to?’

‘Yeah, no problem. You’ll have to give me a couple of hours, though.’

‘Sure.’

I gave him all the details and then my phone number.

‘Oh, and my fee’s gone up a bit,’ he said.

‘Whatever it takes, Spike.’

I hung up — and, within seconds, the phone was buzzing again. I looked down at the display. john cary. I’d forgotten to chase him up again.

‘John,’ I said, answering. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you.’

No response.

‘I left a couple of messages.’

‘I can’t talk for long,’ he replied.

‘Okay.’

‘You still want that photograph looked at?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Send it to me at home. I know a couple of people at the Forensic Science Service, and one of them owes me a favour from a while back. I can ask him to take a look at it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No.’ The line drifted. ‘But make the most of it.’

‘Look, I really appreci—’

‘I’m probably making the biggest mistake of my life.’

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. But I knew my instincts had been right: what had happened to Alex still ate at him, and a part of him longed for closure.

I killed the call and watched the snow slide down the windscreen, my thoughts turning back to Angel’s. The last time I’d ever been inside, the winter had been the same as this one: long and cold, stretching from the beginning of November all the way through to the end of February. Two different times, both connected — like a small part of my past was now merging with the present.

16

Angel’s was a thin building, west of Charing Cross Road. Snow was already piling up against the door when I arrived. Next to it, barred like a cell, was a small window. I peered inside. It was dark; a square of white light at the back was all I could make out. Above me were a pair of neon angel’s wings, and next to the doorway a sign that said it wasn’t open until midday. I looked at my watch. 11.40.

‘You’re early.’

I turned. ‘Woah! Where did you come from?’

A woman was standing behind me, looking me up and down. She was in her mid-forties, pale and boyish, her blonde hair from a bottle, her eyes grey and small. I smiled at her, but she just shook her head. She glanced from the door of the pub to the sky, then pulled her long, fake fur coat tighter around her.

‘Come back in twenty minutes.’ She started unlocking the door.

‘I’m not here to drink.’

She turned to me, disgusted. ‘You wanna strip joint, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

‘I’m not here for that either.’

She pushed the door open and stepped into the open doorway. ‘You wanna chat?’

‘Kind of.’

‘This ain’t the Samaritans.’ She went to push the door closed, but I shoved a foot in next to it and took a step up to the doorway. She didn’t look surprised — as if it happened a lot.

‘There ain’t no money here.’

Her accent was strong. East End.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to rob you.’

She stared at me, then rolled her eyes. ‘The Old Bill. Shit, this must be my lucky day.’

‘I’m not a police officer either.’

She tossed her coat inside, across one of the tables near the door. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘No.’

I rubbed my hands together. ‘We’ll just freeze to death out here, then.’

She glanced up and down the street as snow settled around us, then looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever,’ she said, sighing, and gestured for me to follow her in.

It had hardly changed since the last time I’d been in. They’d replaced the wallpaper — but nothing else. The room was long and narrow, with a five-pointed cove at the back big enough for a couple of tables, and a jukebox wired up to the far wall.

‘So, what’s going down, Magnum?’ she said.

I turned back to her. She was smiling at her joke. I removed my pad and a pen and set it down on the bar, sliding in at one of the stools. ‘What’s your name?’

‘What’s it to you?’

I got out my driver’s licence and held it up to her. ‘My name’s David Raker. I used to be a journalist.’

She frowned, leaned in towards the licence. ‘Journalist?’

‘Used to be.’

She glanced at me. ‘Jade.’

‘That’s your name?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Pretty name.’

‘Whatever.’

‘You’re not used to compliments?’

‘From good-looking boys like you?’ She shook her head. ‘No. Last time I had a man tell me my name was pretty, he was twenty stone and had a comb-over that went all the way to his chin.’

I smiled. ‘That’s my weekend look.’

She went to smile and then it disappeared again, as if she’d reined it back in. She looked me up and down a second time, but didn’t say anything.

‘So, how long you on for today?’ I asked her.

‘Till seven.’

‘Looking forward to it.’

‘Like a hole in the head.’

I fiddled with my notepad. It was a new page. Blank. She walked behind the bar, and leaned across it, staring down at the pad.

‘Looks like an interesting story.’

‘Could be, yeah.’

‘So, what’s a journalist want in this shithole?’

I turned on the stool. ‘At least this shithole’s got new wallpaper since the last time I came in.’

‘That a fact?’

‘How long you been here?’

‘I don’t know — six months maybe.’

I noticed a couple of photos on the wall behind me. I got down off the stool and wandered over. One was a picture of a woman I recognized. She was surrounded by a bunch of regulars on New Year’s Eve, three years ago. Her name was Evelyn. She worked behind the bar back when I used to come in with Jacob. I’d got to know her pretty well — well enough to tell her a little of my life, and for her to really mean she was sorry when I told her Derryn had cancer.

‘Evelyn still around?’

‘No.’

I turned back to her. ‘When did she leave?’

A flicker of something. ‘Dunno.’

I studied her. ‘You don’t know when she left?’

‘It was before my time.’

I walked back to the bar and sat down on the stool again. She didn’t look or sound convinced by what she was saying, but I couldn’t see a reason for her to lie.

I moved on.

‘I’m trying to find someone who might have had a connection with this place. If I show you a picture of him, maybe you could tell me if you’ve seen him in here or not.’

She nodded. I took out a picture Mary had given me of Alex and handed it to her. She squinted at it, as if she was a little short-sighted.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘Alex Towne.’

Her eyes flicked to me across the top of the photo.

‘You know him?’

She took a moment more, then handed the photo back to me. ‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Course I’m sure.’

In my top pocket I had a list of names, taken from the pad in the apartment at Eagle Heights. I unfolded it.

‘You got any regulars with names like these?’

I’d rewritten the names on a separate piece of paper, one under the other. She read down the list and shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘You do or you don’t?’

‘How the fuck am I supposed to know?’ she said. ‘This ain’t exactly the Ritz, I know, but this place gets busy. Lotta people comin’ and goin’.’

I took the list back. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

‘For someone who’s not a copper, you ask a lot of questions, Magnum.’

‘Just interested,’ I said, and looked around the pub again.

Something didn’t feel right about what Jade had said. Either she knew when Evelyn left or she didn’t. And there was something else too. Her eyes had moved when I’d first handed her the picture of Alex, and her skin had flushed. I’d read books back when I first started getting big interviews on the paper, about kinesics and how to interpret body language. Pupil dilation, skin flushing and changes in muscle tone were all unconscious responses to lying.

I turned back to her. She looked suspicious now, unsure about what I was doing. Maybe it was a natural suspicion, built up from her hours working in here. Or maybe she really was lying to me, and was starting to think I’d seen through it.

Suddenly, the door to the pub opened. We both looked round as a couple of old men came in talking. One of them laughed and glanced towards the bar.

‘Morning, Jade. Are we too early?’

She looked at me, then back to them.

‘No, Harry.’

They shuffled up to the bar. One of them slid in at a stool and started fiddling in his pockets for change; the other stood next to him and eyed up the beers on tap. When they were finished, they both glanced at the photograph of Alex, and then at me.

‘Morning,’ Harry said.

I nodded at both of them, then turned to Jade. ‘Is Alex Towne alive?’

For a second I thought I saw something in her face, before she moved to the back of the bar and picked up two empty pint glasses.

‘Jade?’

The two men looked between us.

She started filling one of the glasses, pulling on the pump and looking straight at me — as if proving she had nothing to hide. When she was done with the first beer, she duplicated the movement for the second.

‘You okay, Jade?’ Harry said.

She nodded.

The old men looked between us again, trying to figure out if I was bothering her. They probably already knew what I’d found out in the ten minutes I’d been talking to her: Jade couldn’t be pushed around, and wouldn’t be intimidated — at least not while she was inside the safety of the pub.

I scooped up the notepad and the photo and left. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’d be back at seven when she came off her shift — and this time she wouldn’t see me coming.

17

St John the Baptist church was in Redbridge, a depressing pocket of London close to the North Circular. Ugly, fading tower blocks cast shadows across the streets; melting snow ran from holes in the flyover; black exhaust fumes disappeared into the sky. As I parked the car, half-hidden behind an Indian takeaway, the church’s triangular roof rose out of the grey.

Despite the setting, it was an attractive, modern building: all cream walls and exposed beams. A huge crucifix hung above the door, beautifully carved from wood. Christ looked down from the centre of the cross, a glimmer of hope in his face.

The main doors were locked, so I walked around to the back. A door marked office was partly open. Through the gap, I could see an empty room, with a series of desks and a bookcase at the back. I glanced along the side of the church. Further down was a small annexe. The door to that was open too.

I headed for it.

The structure was about fifteen feet by twenty feet; really just a glorified shed. There were no windows, and its exterior hadn’t been treated properly, so the wood was still a raw orange colour. Inside it was sparse: a couple of posters, a desk, a power lead for a laptop that wasn’t there, a pad, some pens. There was a bookshelf, high up behind the desk, stacked with Bibles, biographies and reference material.

‘Morning.’

A voice from behind me.

It was a young guy, a silver laptop under his arm, dressed in a casual shirt and a pair of jeans. Early thirties, blond shoulder-length hair, parted in the centre, and the eyes to match: big, bright, alive. He smiled as he stepped forward.

‘Morning,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the minister here.’

‘Well, it must be your lucky day,’ he replied. He took another step towards me and held out his hand. We shook. ‘Reverend Michael Tilton.’

‘David Raker.’

‘Nice to meet you. You’re not a Bible salesman, are you?’

I smiled. ‘No. Don’t worry — you’re safe.’

‘Ah good!’ he said, and stepped past me into the annexe. ‘Sorry about the mess in here. I’ve got a youth pastor starting in a few weeks and I’m trying to get things in shape before he arrives. Except, at the moment, it’s just a dumping ground for all my stuff.’

He set the laptop down then slid a small heater out from under his desk and turned the dial all the way up to ten. He closed the door.

‘Pretty humble surroundings, huh?’

There was only one chair, but a couple of removal crates were lying in the corner. He dragged the crates across towards me.

‘And sorry about the seat too. You’re our first visitor in here.’

I sat down. ‘This place looks new.’

‘Yeah, it is,’ he said. ‘We finished it in October. It’s a temporary home for my youth pastor while we raise some money to build an extension on the church.’

He sat down at his desk and glanced at his laptop. On-screen, I could see a password prompt.

‘Well, I won’t take up too much of your day, Reverend Tilton,’ I said, and got out the photograph of Alex.

‘Call me Michael, please.’

I nodded, placing the picture down on the desk in front of him. ‘I’m looking into the disappearance of someone who might have visited you here at one time.’

‘Okay. This is him?’

‘His name was Alex Towne.’

Michael picked up the photograph and studied it. ‘I’m trying to think,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen him around — not in the last couple of months, anyway.’

‘It won’t have been in the last few months.’

‘Oh?’

‘Here’s the real killer: it would be more like six years ago.’

Michael looked up to see if I was being serious. ‘Really?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

He looked at the photograph again. ‘How old is he?’

‘He’d be about twenty-eight now.’

‘So, would he have been part of our Twenties group?’

‘I’m not sure he came to this church regularly. It could have been just once, it could have been a few times. He had some connection with your church — but I haven’t been able to figure out what yet.’

He gritted his teeth. ‘I remember most of the youth quite clearly — I used to be the youth pastor here myself — but…’

As he continued looking at it, I took out the birthday card.

‘This is the connection,’ I said, flipping it over so he could see the sticker on the back. ‘It was a card he bought here, and it says it was made by a woman called Angela Routledge. Is she still around?’

His expression dropped. ‘Angela died a couple of years ago.’

‘Anyone else who might remember selling these cards?’

Michael thought about it — but not for long.

‘Angela ran the card stall on her own. She did it all on her own. Got the materials, made the cards, did everything herself. She was an extraordinary woman. She raised a lot of money for us. It’s because of people like her that we have blessings like this.’

He meant the annexe.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, picking up the photograph again. ‘Can I borrow this photograph for a couple of minutes?’

‘Sure.’

‘I used to draft in a friend of mine for the youth meetings. Let me go and call him and see if he remembers your guy.’

‘You can borrow my phone if you like.’

‘No, it’s fine. I left my mobile inside, and I should probably lock up the church if I’m going to be out here.’ He pointed at the picture. ‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Alex Towne.’

He nodded. ‘I won’t be long.’

He stepped past me and headed towards the church.

I sat for a while on the edge of the crates, looking out through the door. Snow slid down the roof of the main church and spilled out over the drainpipe.

My phone started ringing.

‘David Raker.’

‘David, it’s Spike.’

‘Spike — what you got for me?’

I could hear him using a keyboard. ‘Okay, so the mobile phone was bought in a place called Mobile Network, three weeks ago. It’s on an industrial estate in Bow. I’m guessing it’s some kind of wholesaler, working out of a warehouse.’

‘Okay.’

‘You got a pen?’

I looked around. There was one on Michael’s desk.

‘Yeah — shoot.’

‘The phone’s registered to a Gary Hooper.’

‘Hooper?’

‘Yeah.’

I wrote Gary Hooper on the back of my hand.

‘I don’t know whether that’s any help.’

‘That’s great.’

‘I’ve got a statement here too.’

‘Perfect.’

‘Looks like the phone’s hardly been used. There have only been three calls on it in the past three weeks. Do you want me to read the numbers out?’

‘Yeah.’

He read them out, and I wrote them under Gary Hooper.

The first two numbers I didn’t recognize. The third I definitely did. It was the number for Angel’s.

‘Spike, you’re the magic man. I’ll get you the money later.’

‘You got it.’

I killed the call, and immediately tried the numbers I didn’t recognize.

On the first, an answerphone kicked in after three rings. ‘Hi, this is Gerald. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’ I hung up and wrote the name Gerald down.

As I was putting in the second number, Michael returned. He placed his phone down on the desk and turned to me. His expression said everything.

‘Sorry,’ he said, handing me the photograph of Alex. ‘My friend doesn’t know him either. It’s hard to describe how your guy looks over the phone, but I could probably list every member of our youth group over the past seven years, and Alex… well, he isn’t one of them. I’m really sorry. I hope I haven’t spoiled your day.’

‘No, don’t worry. I appreciate your efforts.’

I glanced down at his phone. On the display it said: LAST CALL: LAZARUS — LANDLINE. He smiled at me again, then scooped up the phone.

‘Is there anything else?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ I replied. I shook his hand and stepped out into the snow. ‘Thanks for your help.’ And then I headed back to the car, letting the cold bite at my skin.

The traffic was terrible as I made my way back into the centre of London. The deeper I got into the city, the slower things became, until finally everything ground to a halt. I watched the snow continue to fall, settling in thick mounds on chimneys and street lights, road signs and rooftops.

Nothing moved but the weather.

After a while, I popped my phone in the hands-free cradle and punched in the second number. It clicked and connected, but no one picked up. I left it for about a minute and, when it was obvious no one was home, reached over to end the call.

Then someone answered.

A voice I recognized.

‘St John the Baptist.’

It was Michael Tilton.

18

I posted the Polaroid of Alex to Cary, and then made my way back towards Soho. By the time I was parked, it was almost seven o’clock — and the end of Jade’s shift. After buying myself a coffee I found a spot in the shadows, across the street from Angel’s. I didn’t want to scare her, but if she saw me straight away, she’d probably disappear back inside. That was her safety net.

Laughter sounded nearby.

A couple, dressed in business suits, stumbled into a nearby restaurant. Opposite, a group of teenaged girls giggled and stopped outside the pub. They looked at each other. One played with her hair; another adjusted her skirt. Then they all reached into their bags for fake ID.

From inside, probably fresh on the evening shift, came one of the barmen, emptying an ice bucket into the gutter. I backed up, further into the shadows. He registered the movement and glanced across the street, eyes narrowing, head tilting. He lingered for a second more, as if trying to satisfy his curiosity, before disappearing back inside.

The street quietened. More snow started to fall.

I sipped at the coffee.

The lull was disturbed by a group of women, out on a hen night, moving along the street. Behind them, a man followed close by, his boots dragging in the slush. Some of the women looked over their shoulders at him — a look that suggested that if they’d been on their own, somewhere less populated, they might have been worried. He dropped back a little as they passed the front of Angel’s, his face disappearing into his coat, but then, when he was past the entrance, he speeded up once more. Some of the girls at the back of the group flicked a look at him again; one of them — fired up with alcohol — turned and asked, ‘What’s your fuckin’ problem?’ But the argument fizzled out when she saw his attention was no longer focused on them or where they were headed. He was looking across the street.

Right at me.

Our eyes locked for a split second and he seemed to hesitate. But then he tagged on to the group again, breaking into a jog and eventually passing them. When he was clear, he looked up ahead to where the road split.

Something stirred in me. A memory.

By the time he started disappearing west, parallel to Chinatown, it had come to me: the guy who broke into my car at the cemetery.

He looked back, saw I was still watching him, and quickened his pace. I tossed the coffee aside and followed. He turned right at the end of the street, then started moving through the crowds working their way down towards Shaftesbury Avenue. It was packed. Shops were still open. Restaurants were luring people in. A queue from a theatre curved out and along the pavement towards me.

He glanced back again, bumped into someone and then upped his pace, disappearing into a crowd of tourists. I headed after him, to where the group — gathering around a tour guide — were blocking the pavement. He emerged the other side and crossed the street.

Then he broke into a run.

Forcing my way through the crowd, I could see him barging through another group of tourists further down. One of them stumbled as he pushed past. Her husband called after him. But when he looked back, it wasn’t to apologize. It was to see how close I was.

I tried to move faster, put my head down for a second, and lost him. He’d gone behind a theatre queue. I crossed the street. There was a back alley close to the queue, black and narrow. Steam hissed out of a vent high up on one of the walls. As I got closer, he burst out from a knot of people about halfway down, glanced at me once, then disappeared into the alley.

The darkness sucked him up.

When I got to the mouth of the alley, I could only hear the echo of footsteps at first. Then he emerged from the shadows, partially lit by a window above. I started down the alley after him. He was a long way ahead of me, almost on to the next street. He stopped when he got there. Looked back. And then disappeared out of sight.

By the time I’d got to the end, he was gone. I stood for a moment, looking both ways. There were crowds on both sides of the street, and cars passing along it. And there were shadows everywhere, doorways to disappear in, tiny vessels of lanes and alleys. Slices of night that would hide him for as long as he needed.

I looked at my watch. Ten minutes past seven.

A thought hit me. Maybe this was the point: they were luring me away from Angel’s so I couldn’t get at Jade. Tricking me. Manipulating me. Maybe the barman had glimpsed me in the shadows out front after all, and gone in and raised the alarm.

But then I stopped dead.

About a quarter of a mile down on my left, Jade was crossing the road. She looked both ways, a cigarette glowing between her fingers, and moved off in the opposite direction. I hesitated, suddenly unsure it was her.

But it was.

It was Jade.

I followed her, keeping to the other side of the street, moving in and out of the pools of light cast by the street lamps. When I drew level with the alley she’d emerged from, I looked along it and saw a big green door, partially open. Above it were a pair of neon angel’s wings. She’d left through the rear entrance — which meant they knew I was waiting.

So why lead me back to where Jade would come out of?

Because it’s a trap.

I hesitated.

What if it was? What if the first guy had led me here and now Jade had been told to lead me somewhere else? What if that phone call outside Eagle Heights had been my one chance to walk away? The one chance I hadn’t taken.

She disappeared from sight at the end of the road.

I stood there, frozen to the spot, uncertainty pumping through my veins. Something flooded my chest, a sense that I’d been here before, in the first few weeks after Derryn’s death: standing on the edge of a precipice, watching the ground crumble beneath my feet.

But then I saw my reflection in a nearby shop window and realized how much direction this case had brought to my life, the energy it had returned to me. And I understood that if I wanted to carry on moving forward, this was something I had to do. A step I had to take.

So, I went after her.

When I got to the end of the road, I saw Jade about forty yards along a street to the right. She was crossing the road and heading for a thin sliver of back street, partially lit. There was a restaurant on the corner, its front decorated in tinsel and Christmas trees. Otherwise it was another London back alley full of exit doors and second-floor windows.

I caught up quickly, and then slowed as I got closer to her.

‘Jade?’

She stopped and turned. She couldn’t see me to start with, then I moved out of the dark and under the light of a Christmas tree.

Her face dropped. She sunk her hands into the pockets of her fur coat: a reflex action. She felt threatened by me. Maybe she hadn’t actually been leading me anywhere.

I held up a hand. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

She didn’t reply. Her eyes darted left and right.

‘I just want to talk to you.’

She nodded, slowly.

‘Were you leading me somewhere?’

Her face creased a little. A frown. ‘I was tryin’ to get away from you.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos you’re trouble.’

‘You knew I was coming?’

She nodded. ‘One of the guys saw you out front.’

The barman. I’d been right.

‘What was the point of the decoy?’

She frowned again.

‘The scruffy guy,’ I said.

Her expression didn’t change.

‘The guy who led me to you. What was the point of that?’

She shrugged and looked away. But when she turned back, her expression had changed to a kind of relief, as if she’d just reached the biggest decision of her life.

‘What d’you want with me?’

‘I just want to talk.’

She shrugged again, and nodded. ‘Then we talk.’

Her eyes got darker as we walked; harder to read. I tried to figure out whether she was scared, or confident, or both, but I gave up as we got to the car. Men were probably drawn to her suddenly and easily — but left just as quickly when they realized she’d never let them in.

‘Is this what you drive?’ she asked, looking at the BMW.

‘This is it.’

‘I thought you’d have something better.’

‘I’m not really Magnum, Jade.’

She glanced inside, then back at me, as if anticipating the question to come.

‘So, what’s going on?’ I said.

‘Can’t we go somewhere?’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Okay.’

We got into the car, and I started it up.

‘What’s on the menu?’

‘Cheeseburgers.’

‘Where?’

She smiled. ‘If you’re paying, there’s a place I know.’

19

We headed east, past the shells of old stadiums and storage yards. Everything was dark, almost decaying, as if the city were slowly dying. Tightly packed housing estates emerged from the night, lonely and deserted, windows dark, street lamps flickering on and off.

‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s near,’ she said, staring out of the window.

I looked at the clock. 8.34.

‘Will they still be serving?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Jade?’

She glanced at me, then shifted in her seat. ‘You lost someone, Magnum?’

‘Huh?’

‘You lost someone?’

‘What do you mean?’

Her eyes caught the light again, her expression perfectly still. ‘You’re sad.’

I didn’t reply. Didn’t want to. But I needed her — more than she needed me. She had turned away from me now, her face reflected in the glass.

‘I lost my wife.’

‘How?’

‘She got cancer.’

She nodded. ‘What was her name?’

‘Derryn.’

She nodded again, looking out of the window. ‘What was she like?’

‘She was my wife,’ I said. ‘I thought she was amazing.’

We drove for about half a mile more, then she told me to take a left. Out of the dark came huge blocks of flats, wrapped in the night.

‘What do you miss most?’

‘About Derryn?’

She nodded.

I thought about it. ‘I miss talking to her.’

The restaurant, Strawberry’s, was an old carriage set inside a series of railway arches. A blue neon sign that said HOT FOOD buzzed above a serving hatch. We got out of the car and Jade led me to one of the tables out front. There were seven of them. Each one had a heater attached, their orange glow lighting the yard in front of the carriage. There was a couple on the table furthest away from us. Apart from that it was empty.

‘Didn’t realize we were going à la carte,’ I said.

Jade ignored me and sat down. She reached into the pockets of her coat, trying to find her cigarettes, and laid the contents out on the table: keys, a wallet, an ATM statement, some cash, a photo which she placed face down. It had writing on the back: this is the reason we do it. She found her cigarettes, removed one and popped it between her lips.

‘Get the burger with everythin’ on,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘This a favourite haunt of yours?’

‘In a previous life,’ she said. ‘I used to come with my mum and dad. They loved places like this. Places with personality.’ She turned and pointed at the carriage. ‘They used to have a guy called Stevie runnin’ it back when it was called Rafferty’s. He liked my mum and dad. Always cooked somethin’ special for them.’

‘Your parents still around?’

A pause. Then she shook her head.

The heater was pumping out plenty of warmth. Jade removed her coat, lit her cigarette and looked at me. ‘So, what’s your story, Magnum?’

‘I’m not a PI, Jade.’

She smirked. ‘But you want to be one.’

‘Do I?’

‘You’re actin’ like one.’

A woman emerged from the carriage wearing a retro waitress’s uniform, a name badge that said Strawberry’s and a face that could turn a man to stone.

‘What can I get you?’ she barked.

‘Two burgers with everythin’ on,’ Jade replied. ‘I’ll have a beer. Magnum?’

I looked at the waitress. ‘A big coffee. Black.’

The waitress disappeared again. Jade and I stared at each other. Light from the heater glinted in her eyes, making her seem mischievous. Then she started to put the things she’d laid out on the table back into her pockets.

‘That your mum and dad?’ I asked her.

She followed my finger. I was pointing at the photo. She picked it up and turned it over. It was a picture of a young kid, perhaps five or six. The photograph was old, discoloured. The boy was running across a patch of grass, kicking a football about. To the left of him was a wire fence. To the right, almost out of picture, a block of flats and a sign.

Eagle Heights.

‘I know that place,’ I said.

She didn’t say anything, hardly even moved.

‘Who’s the boy?’

She glanced at the picture. ‘“This is the reason we do it”,’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

She smiled. ‘I’d tell you if I knew. But I don’t. I don’t know what that means. But I know what the boy represents.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Making a difference.’

‘Making a difference?’

‘What’s that sayin’? Uh…’ She took a drag on her cigarette and stared off into the night, blowing a flute of smoke out into the chill of the evening. ‘The end justifies the means.’

‘Okay.’

‘That’s what this is.’

‘You’ve lost me, Jade.’

She nodded, as if she hadn’t expected me to keep up, then pulled the photo back across the table towards her. ‘You ever had to keep somethin’ secret?’

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t mean no birthday present.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘So, what secret have you had to keep?’

‘I worked in Israel, in South Africa, in Iraq.’

‘So?’

‘I saw things in those places I’ll never forget.’

‘What sorta things?’

I thought of Derryn, of keeping my work away from her. The things I saw. The bodies I stepped over.

‘What sorta things?’ she repeated.

‘Things I could never bring home to my wife.’

The waitress returned with our drinks.

‘Come on, Magnum. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.’

‘I’m not playing this game with you.’

‘It’s not a game, it’s a trade.’

‘I’m not trading with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘We didn’t come here to trade. That wasn’t the agreement.’

‘I don’t remember makin’ no agreement.’

She put the cigarette between her lips and took a drag.

‘I shouldn’t really be smokin’ these,’ she said. ‘But I guess we all have our demons.’ She pressed a thumb against her lips, knowing and playful, and then a small smile escaped. ‘You follow this little project of yours any further, you’re gonna have to face down a few demons of your own.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talkin’ about what you’re gonna find if you get to the end…’ She turned her beer bottle around. ‘I guess mostly I’m talkin’ about the fact that, if you’re not strong in this life, you fail. And I’m about to fail, Magnum — ’cause I’m tired.’

‘Of what?’

‘Runnin’. Lyin’. Startin’ again.’

‘What do you mean, starting again?’

‘I mean, you won’t find anythin’ at Angel’s now. Everyone associated with it as of now will be gone. You askin’ questions, that just makes it harder for you. You go back, it’ll be new people. It’ll have all changed.’

‘Why?’

‘Why d’you think?’

I paused. ‘The bar’s a front.’

She clicked her fingers and smiled.

‘For what?’

‘It helps us do what we really want to do. It makes money for us. It pays our way.’

‘You own it?’

‘Not me.’

‘Who?’

She picked up the statement from the table and opened it, placing it down in front of me. The bank account belonged to Angel’s. There were two pages of listings, but about halfway down was a direct debit payment: CALVARY PRO. 5000.00.

The Calvary Project.

Every month, Angel’s was paying five grand to a company the Inland Revenue didn’t know existed.

‘There’s a paper trail half a mile long,’ she said, preempting the question I was about to ask. ‘You’d be wandering in the dark, lost like a puppy dog, trying to find out anything about that company.’

The waitress arrived with our meals. Jade didn’t waste any time, biting down on the burger, juice bubbling beneath the bun.

‘So, where will everyone from the pub go?’ I asked her.

‘The others… I don’t know. I don’t make those decisions.’

‘What about you?’

She paused. ‘I’m not going back. I can’t now.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m sittin’ here with you — why d’you think?’

‘So, where are you going to go?’

She shrugged.

I thought of the numbers Spike had got me.

‘Who makes the decisions, then? This Gerald guy?’

She started laughing, almost choking on her food. ‘Gerald?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No. Not Gerald.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Gerald doesn’t even know we exist. Gerald’s just a crook, living in some shithole in Camberwell. I just go to him for…’ She paused. ‘Identity changes.’

‘Fake ID.’

She winked. ‘You’re good, Magnum.’

She took another bite of her burger.

‘For you?’

‘For all of us.’

‘Who’s us?’

She smiled. ‘You could be a good copper. You ask the right questions. But you realize the whole reason we’re sittin’ here now isn’t because you’re good, but because we made mistakes. Droppin’ that mobile phone like that, that was a stupid, careless thing to do. Thing is, Jason didn’t expect you to turn up like that. He got jumpy.’

‘So, who’s Gary Hooper?’

‘He’s no one.’

‘The phone your guy Jason dropped is registered to Gary Hooper.’

‘My phone’s registered to Matilda Wilkins. That don’t make me her.’

‘So, who is he?’

‘I told you — he ain’t no one. He’s a ghost. You’ll be chasin’ your tail all fuckin’ day with that one. It’s just a name. Just another lie.’ I watched her push some fries around her plate. ‘I hate to disappoint you, Magnum, but what you have here —’ she gestured to herself ‘— is a foot soldier, not a general.’

‘Who’s Vee?’

‘Vee?’

‘Jason — he asked for Vee. What’s that short for? Veronica?’

She looked at me and suddenly became serious. ‘I’m gonna tell you what I know,’ she started quietly. ‘I’m gonna tell you what I know because I’m tired of runnin’. I’m tired of havin’ to start again when people like you start puttin’ their fuckin’ beaks where they don’t belong. I’m tired of lyin’ to protect somethin’ I don’t…’ She stopped. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Look, first, forget Gerald — he don’t know nothin’. Forget Vee too. That’s just a stage name. And forget the Calvary Project. That won’t lead nowhere but more made-up shit.’

‘What does it do?’

‘What do you think it does?’

‘I don’t think it does anything. You just pass money through it.’

‘It’s a means of protection.’

‘So you can launder money.’

‘Launder money?’ She smiled. ‘This ain’t the mafia.’

‘So the Calvary Project only exists in name?’

She opened a wallet and took out a credit card. ‘All our money comes and goes through it. All our cards are registered to it. It buys our food and our clothes.’

‘So none of the purchases can be traced back to you.’

‘Right.’ She turned the card over. Company Barclaycard. miss matilda wilkins was printed at the bottom. ‘Jade ain’t bought a pair of shoes in years.’

‘This Michael guy, at the church — what’s he got to do with it?’

‘I don’t know much about that.’

‘So, tell me what you do know.’

‘The church is where he recruits people.’

‘Michael?’

She nodded.

‘What do you mean, “recruits”?’

‘Helps them to start again. Sells ’em an idea.’

Selling ideas.

Suddenly, from the darkness of my memory, a face stepped out: the guy with the tattoo in Cornwall. My friend’s a salesman, he’d said. Sells ideas to people. I looked at Jade. She was picking at her food.

‘Who’s the guy with the tattoo on his arm?’

She shot me a look — a sudden, jerking movement like she’d just been punched. Her eyes widened, her face lost colour. She was trying to work out how I’d made the connection.

‘Walk away from that,’ she said quietly.

‘From what?’

‘From him.’

‘Who is he?’

She paused, ran her tongue around her mouth, then jabbed a finger at the photograph of the boy. ‘He’ll protect what that represents above all else. He will go to the ends of the earth to do it. If you can get what you need and get the fuck out without him seeing, then you should do that. Because the only other way to stop him would be to bring the whole thing down.’

‘Bring it down?’

‘The house of cards.’

‘You mean your organization?’

She nodded. ‘But I think it might be too late for that.’

‘Why?’

‘They know who you are. They warned you off once. That’s what they do. They give you a chance. But you coming to the bar this morning, going to the church like you did… They only give you one warning.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘What happens next?’ She paused, looked at me, and we both understood the silence. My heart dropped. You know what happens next, Magnum.

‘Why?’

‘Why d’you think?’

‘Alex?’

She took a sip of beer, didn’t answer.

‘Jade?’

I could hear myself getting impatient. She was still protecting the cause. Still dancing around my questions, even while she was telling me she wanted out. A part of her wanted to break free. But another part of her was so deeply attached to her life, she felt scared about letting go. And she was terrified about the consequences.

‘Why help me?’ I said.

‘Because this whole thing’s outta control.’ She looked at me. Brushed food away from her mouth. ‘We’ve been careless.’

‘Who’s we?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Jade?’

‘We. Us.’ She paused. ‘Him.’

‘Who?’

She glanced at the photograph of the boy, still out on the table.

‘The boy?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘His father.’

‘The man with the tattoo?’

She was teetering. Unsure whether to commit.

‘Jade?’

‘No, not the man with the tattoo.’

‘Who then?’

‘The boy’s father…’ She stopped, looked at me. Something glistened in her eyes. ‘I think, in some ways, he’s even worse.’

‘Who’s the boy’s father?’

‘You’ve pissed him off.’

‘Who is he, Jade?’

‘You’ve really pissed him off. But maybe it’s happening for a reason. I’m not sure I believe in him any more, in what he’s fighting for and the way he’s fighting it.’ She stopped, a sadness in her eyes, then looked up at the sky. ‘And I’m not sure He does either.’

I followed her gaze.

‘He? What is this — some sort of mission from God?’

She didn’t reply, but I could tell I’d hit on something. She picked up the statement and the photograph.

‘Jade?’

She pushed her plate aside. ‘I need to pee.’

And then she was gone, weaving between the tables. She passed the serving hatch, scooped up what looked like a napkin, and headed towards a toilet block next to the carriage. She looked back once, then walked around to the door and out of sight.

I gave it eight minutes. The thought that Jade might try to escape crossed my mind the instant she left the table. I slid out and headed to the toilet block.

It was a dumping ground at the back — drinks cans, carrier bags, a shopping trolley, needles. Beyond, the railway arches continued, gradually melting into the night. I could see one of the windows was open, and there was a crack in it, top to bottom. I looked at it more closely. In the middle of the crack, about three-quarters of the way up, something had been smeared across it, on the inside of the glass.

‘Jade?’

The door to the women’s toilet was open, swinging in the wind coming in off the arches. Inside, the light was on, and I could see blood spatters on one of the walls closest to the door.

I stepped inside.

Jade was slumped against one of the cubicle doors, her head tilted sideways. Her fingers were wrapped around the steak knife that had come with her burger, the blade streaked in blood. The cuts in her wrists were deep and long, and her lifeblood was still chugging out of them, on to her hands, her clothes, the floor.

I backed away, watching a fresh trail of blood carve down one of the cubicle doors, then turned and looked out towards the arches. They were big mouths of darkness that sucked the noise out of the night. And in them I saw something that made me pause: that Jade would rather kill herself than face the consequences of walking away from her organization. Rather die than stand in front of the people she worked for.

The breeze picked up again, and — faintly — I heard a noise, like paper flapping. I looked down at her body. Beneath one of her hands, half-hidden by her balled fingers, was a piece of card. I leaned over, took it from her grasp and pocketed it.

Then I got out my phone and called the police.

20

The police arrived at Strawberry’s ten minutes after I called. There were two of them: Jones and Hilton. Jones was about sixty-five, while Hilton was much younger, nervous, reeking of inexperience. It might even have been his first night on the job. He held up pretty well when Jones beckoned him to the toilet block, both of them kneeling down to look at Jade’s pale body.

They drove me to a station in Dagenham. Taking my statement didn’t last long. It was obvious Jones didn’t believe I’d killed her. Witnesses at the restaurant backed up my account of what had happened. When he asked me why we were there I told him the truth, or a version of it. I knew her, wanted to talk to her and she’d agreed as long as I drove her to her favourite restaurant.

‘You get what you wanted?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Jones shook his head. ‘Hope she paid for the petrol.’

I got the feeling he was so close to retirement he could smell it. Any case that wanted to stick around wasn’t going to be one of his. That suited me fine. If he’d been a couple of years younger, I might have got a rougher ride. He told me they’d have to keep my BMW for a while, as well as my clothes, and that they’d want to speak to me again once the coroner had looked at the body.

‘That might be a couple of days,’ Jones said, ‘but I wouldn’t bank on it. More likely you won’t be hearing anything from us until the new year.’

After that, he showed me the door.

Liz arrived about forty minutes later. She was the only person I knew who would be up at one in the morning. Perhaps the only person I could turn to in an emergency now. After Derryn died, people stuck close to me for a while. Cooked things, offered advice, sat with me in the still of the house. I had no family left, so I relied on colleagues from my newspaper days, on friends of my parents, on people Derryn had known. Most of them were very good to me — but most of them eventually grew tired of babysitting the sad man. At the end of it all, Liz was the only one left. And the irony was she never even got to meet Derryn.

On the phone I told her where she could find the spare key, and asked her to get some clothes for me. Jones lent me a pair of police-issue trousers and a training top while I waited. When she arrived, she handed me a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a coat and I changed in an empty locker room at the back of the station. She waited next to the front desk, dressed in tracksuit trousers and a zip-up training top.

‘You okay?’ she asked when I finally emerged again.

I nodded. ‘I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.’

We walked to her Mercedes, parked around the corner from the station. Inside she turned the heaters on full blast and handed me a takeaway coffee from a cardboard carton. Steam rose out of a small hole in the plastic covering.

‘I popped into the petrol station on the way over. Thought you might want an energy injection. Black, no sugar.’ She paused. ‘Just how you like it.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks.’

She pulled out, and we drove for a while.

‘I appreciate this, Liz.’

She nodded. ‘You going to tell me what happened?’

I glanced at her. She looked back. She had a dusting of make-up on. Maybe she hadn’t taken it off after work. Or maybe she’d just put it on before she came out. Either way, she looked really good. And, as her perfume filled the car, I felt a momentary connection to her. A buzz. I looked away, out into the night, and tried to imagine where the feeling had come from. It had been a long day. A traumatic one. Perhaps it was just the relief of going home. Or perhaps, for a second, I realized how alone I was again.

‘David?’

I turned back to her. ‘Things got a bit messy today.’

‘With a case?’

I nodded.

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

We stopped at some traffic lights. Red light filled the front of the car, and was reflected in her eyes as she looked at me. In front of us was the glow of London City airport.

‘David?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Honestly.’

Her eyes moved across my face. ‘Because if you’re in trouble, I can help you.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m a lawyer. It’s my job. I can help you, David.’

There was a brief pause. Something passed between us; something unspoken. And then the feeling came again. An ache in the pit of my stomach.

‘Whatever you need,’ she said quietly.

I nodded again.

‘You don’t have to do everything on your own.’

You don’t have to be lonely.

I looked at her. She leaned into me a little, her perfume coming with it. The fingers of her hand brushed against my leg. Whatever you need. Her eyes were dark and serious.

‘I can help you,’ she said, almost a whisper.

She leaned in even closer. My heart shifted in my chest, like an animal waking from hibernation. I moved towards her.

‘I need…’

I thought of Derryn, of her grave. It’s too soon. Liz was so close to me I could feel her breath on my face.

‘What?’ she said. ‘Tell me what you need.’

The lights changed. I looked at them, then back to her. The roads were empty. Behind us there was nothing but dark, cavernous warehouses. Her eyes were still fixed on me.

‘I just…’

She studied me — and something changed. She nodded slowly. Then she moved away, slipped the car into first and took off.

‘Liz, I just—’

‘I know.’

‘It’s not that I—’

‘I know,’ she repeated, and glanced at me. One of her eyes glistened. ‘You don’t need to explain, David. I understand.’

I looked at her, my eyes wandering down her body. You don’t have to be lonely. Her breasts. Her waist. Her legs. When I looked up again, she was staring at me.

It’s too soon.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ I said quietly.

She nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Some days…’ I paused. She turned to me again, her face partially lit in the glow from the streets. ‘Some days it’s what I want.’

She nodded again.

‘But some days…’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said gently, and her fingers touched my leg again. ‘I can help you, David.’

‘I know.’

‘When you’re ready, I can help you.’

When I got home, I took out the card Jade had left for me. Blood was spattered across it, her fingerprints marking the corners. It was headed with the Strawberry’s logo. I thought she’d taken a napkin, but she’d picked up one of the restaurant’s business cards instead.

Inside the b of the restaurant’s name was a burger; the lines of the t were fries. And in the middle, in shaky handwriting, was ‘Jade O’Connell, 1 March, Mile End’.

21

I fell asleep at three-thirty and woke again at four. The TV was on mute. An empty coffee mug sat on the floor next to the sofa, the remote control resting on top of it. I turned off the TV, picked up the mug and took it through to the kitchen.

That was when I noticed the security light was on.

I stepped up to the kitchen window and looked out into the night. Footsteps led all the way up to the house, one after another in the snow. Then up to the porch, and around to the side of the house.

None of them were mine.

I put the mug down on the counter and walked back through the house to the bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite drawn. Outside, I could see a trail of footprints right in front of the windows, running parallel to the house, and U-turning at the end and coming back on themselves.

Then: a noise.

Somewhere inside the house.

Swivelling, I looked across the darkness of the bedroom. All I could hear now was snow dripping from the gutters. I edged towards the bedroom door and along the hallway.

Click.

The same noise for a second time.

Is that the door?

I tried to remember what the front door sounded like when I opened and closed it, tried to remember anything about any of the noises the house made. But as I looked along the hallway and waited for the sound to come again, all I could hear was silence.

Maybe it’s an animal.

Liz had a cat. It set the light off all the time.

Click.

The noise again.

And this time something moved: the handle of the front door.

For a split second, it felt like the soles of my feet were glued to every fibre of the carpet. Then, as I fixed my gaze on the handle, it moved again: slowly, quietly, tilting downwards until it couldn’t go any further. The door started to come away from the frame. If I’d been asleep, I wouldn’t have heard a thing.

The door opened all the way. The security light leaked a square of yellow light across the hallway, but nothing else: no movement, no shadows, no sounds.

Then a man stepped into the house.

He was dressed head to toe in black, looking into the darkness of the living room, his back turned towards me. On the top of his head was a mask. He pulled it down over his face, felt around in his belt for something — and then turned and looked down the hallway towards me. I stepped back into the bedroom, my back against the wall.

Oh, shit.

In the light I could see he’d had a gun, silencer attached. And on his face was a plastic Hallowe’en mask. Eyeless. Mouthless. Unmoving. Staring down the hallway and looking for me in the darkness had been the devil.

I turned back to the bedroom.

Two stand-alone wardrobes, full of clothes and shoes. A bookcase. A dresser. The door into the ensuite. No hiding places. No weapons to hand. Nothing to fight back with.

Click.

A noise from the hallway.

He’s coming.

The door into the bedroom swung back into a tiny cove, about two feet deep, cut into the wall. It was my only option. I slid behind it, pulling the door as far back towards me as it would go. I could only see in two directions now: right, through the narrow gap between the door and the frame; and left, to the far edge of the bed and the dresser. I looked left.

As I turned, the sound seemed immense; every noise amplifying in my ears, every beat of my heart, every blink of my eyes. I expected to be able to hear the man as he approached, hear something, but the house was silent now. No footsteps. No creaks.

In the mirror on the dresser, I could make out all of the bedroom. The bedside cabinets. Derryn’s books. Her plant. The bath, basin, shower. The door, and beyond it into the blackness of the hallway.

Nothing moved.

Nothing made a sound.

But then, suddenly, he was there.

A flash of red plastic skin. The toes of his boots, dark but polished, shining in the glow from the security light. More of the mask emerged from the hallway, as if it were consuming the darkness. The man stopped, scanned the room, his body turning. But he made no sound at all, even as he stepped further in.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. I couldn’t risk any noise. I had nothing to compete with a gun, and only one way to protect myself: make him believe I wasn’t home.

Another step.

He brought the gun up slightly, his finger wriggling at the trigger gently. It sounded like he was breathing in. Sniffing. Like a dog trying to pick up a trail. He glanced towards the dresser, into the mirror, seeming to look right at me. And then he moved. Past the bathroom. Along the edge of the bed.

I could smell something then. A horrible, degraded odour, like decaying compost, trailing the man as he moved. I swallowed, felt like I had to, just to try to get the smell out of my throat and nose. But the stench didn’t go away. It was coming off him like flakes of skin. I swallowed again, and again, and again, but couldn’t get rid of it.

The man in the mask bent slightly and scanned under the bed, then came up again and leaned forward to look at Derryn’s bedside cabinet. I heard the gentle slide of drawers opening and closing, then another noise: a picture frame being picked up. When he turned around, his hands were down at his side again — one holding the gun, one empty — and the picture frame was gone. A photograph of Derryn and me on our last holiday together.

It took everything I had not to make a sound. Whoever was behind the mask had just crawled beneath my skin. Violated me. My wife. Our memories. A bubble of anger worked its way up through my chest, then fear cut across it as the man approached, the gun slightly raised in front of him. Faster, more determined, as if he suddenly realized where I was.

He stopped again in the doorway. Turned back. Scanned the bedroom a second time. Then he breathed in through the mask; a long, deep intake of air. As he breathed out, I could smell him again. His decay. His stink. I held my breath, desperate not to swallow. Desperate not to make a noise.

Eventually, he turned for the final time and headed out, across the hallway, into the spare bedroom. In the mirror, I watched the night swallow up his entire body — except for the mask. In the darkness, the red of the plastic never disappeared.

He scanned the room, the mask moving with him, left to right; one long, snake-like movement. When he was done, he did the same thing again, replicating the action exactly. Then, finally, he turned and stepped back into the half-light of the hallway, pausing, and looking across towards me. I stood motionless, soundless, staring through the gap between the door and the frame, right into the darkness of the mask’s eyeholes.

Then, finally, he left.

The Programme

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking across at the door out of the room. It was open. Beyond was a living area, stripped of almost all decor. The only furniture he could see was a table in the middle, and a single chair pushed under it.

It was a trick. Had to be.

He tried to work out how long they’d kept him, how long he’d been waking in the middle of the night and staring into the corner of the bedroom. Two or three weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe more. And during that time the door had never been open.

But now it was.

He leaned forwards a little. He could make out more of the living area now: a second door to the right of the table, closed. A bookcase, empty, next to that. On top of the bookcase was a book. It had gold lettering on it, a Post-It note attached to the front.

He got to his feet, dropped the blanket on to the bed and slowly shuffled to the bedroom door. Stopped. Now he could see what the book was.

A Bible.

Hesitating, he took another couple of steps forward, into the living area. The floorboards were cold against his bare feet.

‘Hello there.’

He turned and, through the corner of his eye, saw a man standing next to the door to the bedroom. Leaning against the wall, dressed entirely in black. Tall, broad, well built.

‘How are you feeling?’

I recognize you, he thought, looking across at the tall man, trying to find the tail of the memory. But it wouldn’t come to him. Memories were starting to swim away, disappearing every day — and they weren’t coming back again.

‘Have you lost your voice?’ the tall man said, and stepped away from the door. ‘My name is Andrew, by the way.’

‘Where am I?’ he said, his words indistinct as they passed through his toothless gums.

Andrew nodded. ‘Ah, so you do speak.’

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re safe.’

‘Safe?’ He looked around him. ‘From who?’

‘We will get to that.’

‘I want to get to it now.’

Andrew paused. Something flared in his eyes, and then it passed again.

‘You remember what you did?’

He tried to think. Tried to grasp at another memory.

‘I, uh…’

‘You made a mess of your life, that’s what you did,’ Andrew said, his voice harder now. ‘You had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. So you turned to us.’

‘I turned to Mat.’

Andrew smirked. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘No, you didn’t. Mat doesn’t exist.’

‘What?’ He frowned. ‘I want to see Mat.’

‘Are you deaf?’

He looked around the room, towards the door. ‘Wha— where is he?’

‘I told you,’ Andrew said. ‘He doesn—’

‘I want to know where he is!’

In the blink of an eye, Andrew was on him, clamping a huge hand on to his throat. He leaned in so they were almost touching noses, and squeezed with his fingers. ‘You have to earn the right to speak. So, don’t ever speak to me like that.’

Andrew shoved him away, and — as he stepped back — a memory came to him: pinned down on the dentist’s chair, looking up at a tall man in a surgical mask.

Andrew.

‘You…’ he said quietly, touching his gums with his fingers.

‘Don’t say anything you’re going to regret.’

‘You took out my teeth.’

Andrew looked at him.

‘You took out my teeth,’ he said again.

‘We saved your life.’

‘You took out my teeth.’

‘We saved your life,’ Andrew spat. He took a big step forward again, his hands opening and closing. ‘I’m willing to help you here, but I can just as easily feed you to the darkness.’

The darkness.

He swallowed. Looked at Andrew.

He meant the devil.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ he replied, holding up a hand.

Andrew paused, steel showing in his face. ‘I don’t care about your teeth. There are things going on here more important than your vanity. Soon you will come to understand the situation you are in — and the situation you were pulled out of.’

He stared blankly at Andrew.

‘I don’t expect you to understand. That’s why I’ve left something there for you to read.’ Andrew nodded at the Bible. ‘I suggest you study the passages I’ve highlighted. Process them. Because you’d better start to appreciate that you’re standing in the middle of this room with your heart still beating in your chest.’

Andrew stepped closer to him.

‘But if you cross us, we will kill you.’

And then he left.

He’s in an apartment, two floors up. There’s no furniture, and holes in the floor. He’s sitting at a window, facing Mat. He feels scared.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I have friends who can help you,’ Mat says. ‘They run a place for people like you.’

‘I don’t want to run any more.’

‘You won’t have to. These people — they will help you. They will help you to start again. The police will never find you.’

‘But I don’t know who I can trust.’

‘You can trust me.’

‘I thought I could trust my own family.’

‘You can count on me, I promise you that. These people will help you to disappear, and then they will help you to forget.’

‘I want to forget, Mat.’

Mat shifts closer, places a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know you do. But do me a favour. Don’t call me Mat from now on.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My friends, the people who are going to help you, I’m not Mat to them. Mat is dead now.’ He pauses, looks different for a moment. ‘You can call me Michael.’

When he woke, Andrew was sitting at the bottom of the bed. He brought his knees up to his chest, glanced at Andrew, and then looked out through the top window. Early morning. Or maybe late afternoon. He wasn’t sure any more.

‘Have you read the book I gave you?’ Andrew said.

The book. The book. The book. He tried to find the memory, a spark that would lead him to the book, but it wouldn’t come.

‘I can’t remember,’ he said quietly.

‘It was a Bible,’ Andrew replied, ignoring him. ‘The book was a Bible. You remember I gave you a copy of the Bible, right?’

‘No.’

Andrew paused, studied him. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve been treating you differently from the others, you know that?’

‘The others?’

‘Your programme is different.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your room, the food we give you, the way we’ve been with you — it’s not our normal way of working. I don’t think you realize how lucky you are.’ Andrew’s eyes shifted left and right, suspicion in them. ‘But I worry about you, you know that? I worry that you think the best way to get better is to fight us.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Am I right?’

He shook his head.

‘Normally, that doesn’t concern me. On our regular programme, we have ways of dealing with problems. But with you here, among this luxury, it’s more difficult.’

Andrew looked at him.

‘Do you want to fight us?’

He shook his head again.

‘Good,’ Andrew said, standing. ‘Because you don’t want to fight us. But if I see that look in your face again, I’ll put you on the same programme as everyone else.’

Andrew moved across the room and placed a hand on the door.

‘And, believe me, you don’t want to be on that programme.’

He lifted his head. He was sitting in the corner of a different room, pitch black. He couldn’t remember how he’d got here. Didn’t know how long he’d been out. His arm was raised to head height and locked to something. Knotted maybe, or clamped. It pinched his skin when he moved, and pin and needles prickled in his muscles.

Where the hell am I?

He could see a thin shaft of moonlight bleeding in through a window further down the wall. And as his eyes started to adjust to the darkness, other shapes emerged: a door, on the far side, closed most of the way; and a white shape, like a sheet, diagonally across from him. There was a breeze coming in from somewhere, and the sheet was moving, billowing up as the wind passed through.

Something specked against his skin. He turned. The wall beside him was wet, almost glistening. There was a liquid on it, dribbling down. He brushed it with his hand. Water. It was running down the walls, all the way along the room.

Next to him, at his eyeline, was a square metal plate, bolts in all four corners, with an iron ring coming out of it. Water was on that too — and something else as well. Darker. It smelt of rust. Maybe copper.

Oh shit, it’s blood.

He tried to move his arm away from the wall — but something glinted and rattled. He felt handcuffs pinching his skin. One loop was attached to the ring, the other clamped around his left wrist. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t escape. Couldn’t even get to his feet without being pulled back down again.

He glanced towards the door.

The sheet had moved now. Edged a little closer to him, parallel to the wall. This time, he could make out something beneath the sheet: a shape.

‘Hello?’

The shape twitched.

‘Hello?’

It twitched again. The sheet slid a little, falling towards the floor. And from beneath the white cotton, a face looked out at him.

A girl. Maybe only eighteen.

‘Hello?’ he said again.

She was thin. Her mouth flat and narrow. Her skin pale. In the darkness of the room, she looked like a ghost.

‘Where are we?’

She looked towards the door — a slow, gradual, prolonged movement — and then back to him. But she said nothing.

‘Are you okay?’

No reply. Her head tilted forward a little, as if she was having trouble holding it up. He tried edging away from the wall, as far across the room as he could go.

‘Are you okay?’

And then he felt something soaking through his trousers. He looked down at the floor. A pool of vomit was under one of his legs. He backed up, away from it, and slipped. The handcuffs yanked at him as they locked in place, and pain shot through the top of his arm, like his shoulder had popped out of joint.

‘Keep quiet.’

He looked across at the girl.

She was staring at him now, her eyes light like her skin, her hair matted and dirty. The sheet had fallen away. Beneath, she was only wearing a bra, some panties and a pair of socks.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

She didn’t reply.

‘Can you hear me?’

She twitched, as if someone had jabbed her with the point of a knife, then turned to look out through to the landing again. She stared into the darkness beyond.

‘What’s your name?’

She finally turned back to face him ‘Keep quiet.’

‘What’s going on? Where are we?’

She shook her head.

‘What’s your name?’

She paused. Looked at him. ‘Rose.’

He edged away from the wall again, careful not to stand in the puke this time. The smell in the room was starting to get to him.

‘Listen to me, Rose. I’m going to get us out of here — but you’re going to have to help me. You’re going to have to tell me some things.’

She stared out through the doorway. Her spine was dotted down the middle of her back; and there was a bruise, big and black, on her left side, just next to her bra strap.

She said something, but he didn’t pick it up.

‘What did you say?’

She pulled the sheet around her again, and faced him. Her arm was also handcuffed to the wall. He noticed there were more rings running the length of the walls on both sides of the room. Equal distances apart.

Then he spotted something else.

A sharp piece of tile, maybe from a bathroom wall, or a roof, about four feet in front of him. It was shaped like a triangle. Jagged on one side. He moved as far away from the wall as he could get, the handcuffs locking in place again, and swept a leg across the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Rose whispered.

He tried to get to the tile again. His boot made better contact this time, and the tile turned over, the noise amplified inside the stillness of the room.

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘He will hear you.’

He looked at her. ‘Who?’

‘The man.’ She glanced out through the door. ‘The man in the mask. The devil.’

I wonder what you taste like, cockroach.

A shiver passed through him.

‘Who is he?’ he whispered.

She shrugged. ‘A friend of the tall man.’

The tall man. The tall man. He fished for the memory, but it wouldn’t come. He stared at her blankly.

‘Andrew,’ she said quietly.

Andrew.

Then the memory formed. The man dressed all in black. The tall man. The one who had been there when they’d taken his teeth.

He looked at Rose. ‘I can’t…’

‘Remember anything?’

He paused, a part of him scared to admit it. ‘Yes.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s what they do,’ she said. ‘That’s how they make you forget about what you’ve done. You want my advice?’ She glanced at the doorway again, then at him once more. ‘Hang on to what you can, because once it’s gone, it ain’t coming back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, eventually, you’ll forget everything.’

‘Forget everything?’

‘Everything you’ve done.’

‘What do I need to forget?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What do you need to forget?’

She watched him for a moment, as if trying to figure out the answer for herself, then turned her attention back to the doorway. The sheet had slipped again. Against her pale skin, the bruise on her back looked dark, like spilt ink. He imagined it was painful too. Right down to the bone.

‘Did the man in the mask give you that bruise?’

Rose looked down at herself and brought her free hand around to her back, running her fingers across the surface of her skin.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I tried to run.’

‘Run from what?’

‘What do you think? This place. The programme.’

‘The programme?’

A creak outside the room.

‘Rose?’

She put a finger to her lips and studied the darkness beyond the door. ‘Seriously, you need to be quiet,’ she said eventually. ‘He likes to surprise you. He likes to watch. Give him an excuse and he will hurt you.’ She paused, felt for her bruise again. ‘The people who help run this place, I’ve watched them. Most of them still believe in something. They still seem to have rules. But the devil… I don’t know what the fuck he believes in.’ Rose stared at him. ‘He will hurt you,’ she said quietly. ‘And he will hurt me. That’s what he does for them.’ She paused, blinked. ‘Sometimes I think he might actually be the devil.’

Click.

They both looked towards the corner of the room. Into the darkness. The one corner where no light reached.

Then out of the night came a cockroach.

Its body clicked as it scurried across the floorboards. The girl’s eyes fixed on the insect, and, as they did, her mouth dropped open. She started to sob, moving back against the wall, her handcuffs rattling above her.

‘You going to save her, cockroach?’

A voice from the blackness of the night.

He shuffled across the floor on his backside, moving in as tight to the wall as he could. Water soaked through to his back. And even from across the other side of the room, he could smell the man in the mask now: an awful, decaying stench. Like a dead animal.

From the corner of the room, a sliver of a horn emerged, sprouting from the top of a red mask.

‘What are you going to do, cockroach?’ the voice continued, fleshy and guttural. ‘Break free and take her with you?’ Laughter, the sound muffled by the mask. ‘Andrew kept telling me you had to be treated differently. But I never saw it that way. You’re a mistake. You don’t fit in here. You complicate things, go against everything we’ve built. And you’re holding on to the miserable fucking existence you once called a life, with no intention of letting go. If anything, we should be treating you worse.’

More of the mask emerged from the darkness: an eye hole.

‘I never agreed with Andrew when he said you weren’t to go on the programme. I went along with it, but I lobbied hard to have you brought back down to earth. All the way back down.’

A second eye hole. Half the mask was visible now.

‘And now I win. Deep down, Andrew knows there can’t be one rule for you and one for everyone else. No one deserves special favours. That’s not what this place is about. You accept what we offer you — or you fight us. And you’ve been fighting us since the first day we brought you here. Maybe you haven’t tried to run like that skinny little bitch over there. But it’s been in your head. In your eyes. I’ve seen it. You want to fight us. And you know something?’

A long pause. Then, suddenly, the devil came out of the darkness, the smell with him, leaning in over the man handcuffed to the walls of the room.

‘I love it when you fight.’

He looked at the devil and tried to speak. But the words refused to rise through his throat. Breath hardly passed between his lips.

‘So, you’re on the real programme now, you filthy piece of shit. No more luxury. No more favours. And I hope you fight. I really hope you fight.’ Slowly, his tongue emerged from his lips, sliding along the ridge of the mouth slit, one end to the other. ‘Because I really, really want the chance to cut you up.’

Deep underground, in the bowels of their compound, was another place. The biggest room they had. It was split into two and divided by a set of double doors.

The largest part of the room was once used as an industrial fridge, but there was nothing in it now. It sat empty, its strip lights buzzing, its walls stained brown and red with rust, its floor dotted with tears and blood.

Next to it, on the other side of the double doors, was a second, smaller room. When they came for him at dawn four days later, unexpectedly, violently, that was where they took him. They dragged him to a solitary chair in the middle of the room and made him face what awaited.

The final part of the programme.