Red Station

FOURTEEN

That evening, Harry unscrewed the ancient shower-head and idled time away digging limescale out of the holes with a needle. He found it oddly therapeutic and rewarded himself with a hot shower and a glass of whisky, courtesy of another two miniatures from the flight in.

It did little to deaden his underlying feelings of dismay, but helped him relax to a point where he could begin to worry about it less.

He was sinking slowly into a welcoming sleep when he heard a noise outside his door. He wasn’t yet accustomed to the building and all its various clicks and creaks, and whatever had alerted him might be one of those. He lay for a while, analysing the sounds: the wind, a shutter flapping, a passing vehicle, someone shouting in the distance, the creak of a shutter. Normal stuff. He relaxed, eyes growing heavy.

Then it came again. The scuff of a footstep on the stairs.

Somebody had moved along the landing.

He slid out of bed and padded through to the door. At first he couldn’t hear anything. Then he detected a slight murmur, lifting out from somewhere below and carrying up the stairway.

Voices.

Mario the Roman photographer back from his assignment? Or visitors?

He went to the window and peered down. A dark car stood at the kerb. No sign of exhaust smoke, but a man was standing by the driver’s door, hip against the bodywork. He wore a uniform jacket and had a holster strapped to his side. A curl of cigarette smoke rose in the air, ghostly under the street lights.

Not Mario, then.

A crash of something breaking echoed in the night. It was enough to make the man by the car turn his head, but lazily, unconcerned.

Harry scrubbed at his eyes. He was tired and his mouth tasted gummy with too much coffee, but going back to sleep was out of the question. He put on his trousers and shoes, went to the front door. Easing it open, he looked through the crack towards the stairs. If anyone was waiting out there, they were on a lower flight, out of sight. He opened the door wider and stepped on to the landing. The murmuring was louder out here, punctuated by a low huff of laughter.

He leaned over the stairway and looked down. A man was standing in the middle of the small foyer. He looked up and Harry jerked his head back. Waited for the sound of footsteps moving up. But there was silence.

More voices and footsteps moved across the foyer and out the door. Silence.

Kicking off his shoes, Harry went downstairs, keeping to the inside wall. He reached the last step and checked the front entrance. The door was closed.

But the door to the ground-floor flat wasn’t.

A car engine clattered, fading quickly into the night. He counted to twenty before moving to the door of Mario’s flat. He pushed it back and stepped inside.

His first impression was of stale cooking and something faintly chemical. Developing fluids? He wasn’t certain. Surely they’d all gone digital now.

He prowled through the flat, feeling like an invader. It had been neat once. Basic, like his own place, but with personal touches here and there. A photo frame on a sideboard, showing two older people and a younger man — a family shot; some books, magazines, even a small television. Items of clothing lay on the back of an armchair, crumpled as if ready for ironing. Home from home. He knew the process well; a minute reflection of the place the man had come from, a memory of somewhere familiar.

The place had been tossed with little care. Moving furniture and not bothering to replace it; opening books and leaving them up-ended like dead birds, the pages bent and creased; cushions opened by a sharp blade, the stuffing emptied on to the floor; and a wastebasket up-ended with scraps of paper and cardboard wrapping from a camera store lying nearby. A vase lay broken on the thin rug in the centre of the room.

The sound of breaking he’d heard earlier.

He went back upstairs, leaving the door the way he’d found it. If the visitors came back and thought someone else had been inside, they’d be calling on him next.

Harry closed his front door and dropped his shoes on the floor. He took a small rubber wedge out of his bag and jammed it under the door. It wouldn’t stop a tank or even someone mildly determined to get in, but it would give him a few moments’ warning. Enough to start throwing furniture.

He climbed back into bed and waited for sleep, wondering what the Roman photographer, Mario, had been up to. And where he was now.