Slade House

Shining Armor, 1988

“Good evening, here are today’s headlines at six o’clock on Saturday, October the twenty-second. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street today, the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd rejected criticism of the government’s ban on broadcast interviews with members of the Irish Republican party, Sinn Fein. Mr. Hurd said—” I switched off the radio, got out of my car and looked up at the pub. The Fox and Hounds. A memory came back to me, of me and Julie popping in for a drink here one time. We were house hunting, and we’d viewed a place on Cranley Road, one street up. It’d sounded all right in the estate agent’s but a right bloody shit-hole it turned out to be — damp, gloomy, with a garden too small to bury a corpse in, it was so depressing we needed a liquid pick-me-up just to face the drive home. Five years ago, that was. Five years, one wedding, one dismal honeymoon in Venice, four Christmases with Julie’s godawful CND, tree-hugging relatives, fifteen hundred bowls of Shredded Wheat, two hundred and fifty bottles of wine, thirty haircuts, three toasters, three cats, two promotions, one Vauxhall Astra, a few boxes of Durex, two emergency visits to the dentist, dozens of arguments of assorted sizes and one beefed-up assault charge later, Julie’s still living in a cottage with a view of woods and horses, and I’m in a flat behind the multi-story car park. Mr. Justice Jones said I was lucky I wasn’t booted out of the Force. Thank God me and Julie’d never had kids, otherwise she’d be shafting me for child support as well as compensation for her “disfigurement.” Grasping bitch. Five years gone. Blink of a bloody eye.

I set off down Westwood Road, eyes peeled. I asked a woman in a miniskirt and ratty fake fur coat — on the game, I’d bet a tenner — if she’d heard of Slade Alley, but she shook her head and strode by without stopping. Three Asian kids went trundling past on skateboards, but I’d had enough of our curry-munching cousins for one day so I didn’t ask them. A jogger ran past in a blur of orange and black but joggers are tossers. The multy-culty brigade bleat on about racism in the Force, but I’d like to see them keep order in a town full of Everywherestanis whose only two words of English are “police” and “harassment,” and whose alleged women walk about in tall black tents. It takes more than holding hands and singing “Ebony and Ivory.”

The streetlights came on and it was looking like it might rain; the sort of weather that used to give Julie her mysterious headaches. I was tired after a long and stressful day and at the “sod this for a game of soldiers stage,” and if our chief super was anyone but Trevor Doolan I’d have buggered off home to the remains of last night’s tandoori takeaway, had a laugh at the Sharons and Waynes on Blind Date, then seen if Gonzo and a few of the lads were up for a pint. Unfortunately Trevor Doolan is our chief super and a walking bloody lie-detector to boot, and come Monday he’d be asking me some rectal probe of a question that I’d only be able to answer if I’d really followed up Famous Fred Pink’s “lead.” It’d be “Describe this alley to me, then, Edmonds …” or some such. With my appraisal in November and the Malik Enquiry due to report in two weeks, my tongue has to stay firmly up Doolan’s arse. So down Westwood Road I trogged, looking left, looking right, searching high and low for Slade Alley. Could it have been blocked off since Fred Pink’s day, I wondered, and the land given to the house-owners? The Council do that, with our blessing: alleyways are trouble spots. I got to the end of the road where the A2 skims past a park and dropped my fag down a gutter. A guy with a busted nose was sat behind the wheel of a St. John’s ambulance and I nearly asked him if he knew Slade Alley, but then I thought, Bugger it, and headed back towards my car. Maybe a swift beer at The Fox and Hounds, I thought. Exorcise Julie’s ghost.

About halfway back down Westwood Road I happened upon an altercation between a five-foot-nothing traffic warden and two brick shit-houses at least eighteen inches taller, wearing fluorescent yellow jackets and with their backs to me. Builders, I could just bloody tell. None of the trio noticed me strolling up behind them. “Then your little notebook’s wrong.” Builder One was prodding the traffic warden on the knot of his tie. “We weren’t here until after four, gettit?”

“I was ’ere,” wheezed the traffic warden, who was the spit of that Lech Wałęsa, that Polish leader, but with an even droopier mustache. “My watch—”

“Your little watch is telling you porkies,” said Builder Two.

The traffic warden was turning pink. “My watch is accurate.”

“I hope you’re a good performer in court,” said Builder One, “’cause if there’s one thing juries hate more than traffic wardens, it’s short, little Napoleon, privatized traffic wardens.”

“My height’s nothing to do with illegal flamin’ parking!”

“Ooh, the ‘F-word’!” said Builder Two. “Verbal abuse, that is. And he didn’t call me ‘sir’ once. You’re a disgrace to your clip-on tie.”

The traffic warden scribbled on his ticket book, tore off the page and clipped it under the wiper of a dirty white van they were standing next to. “You’ve got fourteen days to pay, or face prosecution.”

Builder One snatched the parking ticket off the windscreen, wiped it on his arse and scrumpled it up.

“Very tough,” said Lech Wałęsa, “but you’ll still have to pay.”

“Will we? ’Cause we both heard you ask for a bribe. Didn’t we?”

Builder Two folded his arms. “He asked for fifty quid. I could hardly believe my ears. Could you believe your ears?”

The traffic warden’s jaw worked up and down: “I did not!”

“Two against one. Mud sticks, my faggoty friend. Think about your little pension. Do the clever thing, turn around, and go—”

“What I just heard was conspiracy to bear false witness,” I said, and both builders swiveled round, “and to pervert the course of justice.” The older of the two had a broken nose and a shaved head. The younger one was a freckled carrot-top with raisin eyes too close together. He spat out some chewing gum onto the pavement between us. “Plus litter offences,” I added.

The Broken Nose stepped up and peered down. “And you are?”

Now I’m not one to boast, but I cut my teeth in the Brixton Riots and earned a commendation for bravery at the Battle of Orgreave Colliery. It takes more than a hairy plasterer to put the shits up me. “Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds, CID, Thames Valley Police.” I flashed my ID. “Here’s a suggestion. Pick up that ticket and that gum; climb into your pile-of-shit van; go; and pay that fine on Monday. That way I might not bring a tax audit down on you on Tuesday. What’s that face for? Don’t you like my fucking language? Sir?”

Me and the traffic warden watched them drive off. I lit up a smoke and offered one to Lech Wałęsa, but he shook his head. “No, thanks all the same. My wife would murder me. I’ve given up. Apparently.”

Pussy-whipped: no surprise. “Bit of a thankless job, huh?”

He put away his pad. “Yours, mine or being married?”

“Ours.” I’d meant his. “Serving the Great British Public.”

He shrugged. “At least you get to put the boot in sometimes.”

“Moi? Poster boy for community policing, me.”

A Bob Marley lookalike walked straight at us. The traffic warden stood to one side, but I didn’t. The Dreadlocked Wonder missed me by a provocative centimeter. The traffic warden glanced at his watch. “Just happened to be passing, Detective Inspector?”

“Yes and no,” I told him. “I’m looking for an alleyway called Slade Alley, but I’m not sure it even exists. Do you know it?”

Lech Wałęsa gave me a look that started off puzzled; then he smiled, stepped aside and did a flourish like a crap magician to reveal a narrow alleyway cutting between two houses. It turned left at a corner twenty yards away, under a feeble lamp mounted high up.

“This is it?” I asked.

“Yep. Look, there’s the sign.” He pointed at the side of the right-hand house where a smeary old street sign read SLADE ALLEY.

“Shag me,” I said. “Must’ve walked straight past it.”

“Well, y’know. One good turn deserves another. Better be off now — no rest for the wicked, and all that. See you around, officer.”

Inside the alley, the air was colder than out on the street. I walked down to the first corner, where the alley turned left and ran for maybe fifty paces before turning right. From up above, Slade Alley’d look like half a Swastika. High walls ran along the entire length, with no overlooking windows. Talk about a mugger’s paradise. I walked down the middle section, just so I’d be able to look Chief Super Doolan in his beady eye and tell him I inspected every foot of Slade Alley, and found doodly bloody squat, sir. Which is why I came across the small black iron door, about halfway down the middle section on the right. It was invisible ’til you were on top of it. It only came up to my throat and was about two feet wide. Now, like most people, I’m many things: a West Ham supporter, a Swampie from the Isle of Sheppey, a freshly divorced single man, a credit-card debtor owing my Flexible Friend over £2,000 and counting; but I’m also a copper, and as a copper I can’t see a door opening onto a public thoroughfare without checking if it’s locked. Specially when it’s getting dark. The door had no handle but when my palm pressed the metal, lo and behold the bloody thing just swung open easy as you please. So I stooped down a bit to peer through …

… and where I’d expected a shitty little yard, I found this long garden with terraces and steps and trees, all the way up to a big house. Sure, the garden’d gone to seed a bit, with weeds and brambles and stuff, and the pond and shrubbery’d seen better days, but it was still pretty breathtaking. There were roses still blooming, and the big high wall around the garden must’ve sheltered the fruit trees because they still had most of their leaves. And Jesus Christ, the house … A real mansion, it was. Grander than all the other houses around, half covered with red ivy stuff. Big tall windows, steps going up to the front door. The curtains were drawn, but the house sort of glowed like vanilla fudge in the last of the evening light. Just beautiful. Must be worth a bloody mint, specially with the housing market going through the roof right now. So why oh why oh why had the owners left the garden door open for any Tom Dick or Harry to amble in whenever they felt like it? They must be bloody mental, I thought. No burglar alarm either, so far as I could see. That really got my goat—’cause guess who gets the job of picking up the pieces when the houses of the rich get broken into? The boys in blue. So I found myself walking up the stony path to give the owner a talking-to about domestic security.

My hand was on the knocker when a soft quiet voice said, “Can I help you?” and I turned round to find this woman at the foot of the steps. She was about my age, blonde, with bumps in all the right places under a man’s baggy granddad shirt and gardening trousers. Quite a looker, even in her wellies.

“Detective Inspector Edmonds, Thames Valley Police.” I walked down the steps. “Good evening. Are you the owner of this property, madam?”

“Yes, I–I’m Chloe Chetwynd.” She held out her hand, fingers together and knuckles upwards like a woman so it’s hard to shake properly. I noticed her wedding ring. “How can I help you, Detective … uh, oh God, forgive me, your name — it came and went.”

“Edmonds, Mrs. Chetwynd. Detective Inspector.”

“Of course, I …” Chloe Chetwynd’s hand fluttered near her head. Then she asked the expected question: “Has anything happened?”

“Not yet, Mrs. Chetwynd, no; but unless you get a lock on that garden gate, something will happen. I could have been anyone. Think about it.”

“Oh gosh, the gate!” Chloe Chetwynd pushed a strand of waxy gold hair off her face. “It had a, a sort of … wire clasp thing, but it rusted away, and I meant to do something about it, but my husband died in June, and everything’s been a bit … messy.”

That explains a lot. “Right, well I’m sorry to hear about your loss, but a burglar’d leave your life one hell of a lot messier. Who else lives here with you, Mrs. Chetwynd?”

“Just me, Detective. My sister stayed on for a fortnight after Stuart died, but she has family in King’s Lynn. And my cleaner comes in twice a week, but that’s all. Me, the mice and the things that go bump in the night.” She did a nervous little smile that wasn’t really a smile.

Tall purple flowers swayed. “Do you have a dog?”

“No. I find dogs rather … slavish?”

“Slavish or not, they’re better security than a ‘wire clasp thing.’ I’d get a triple mortice lock fitted top, middle and bottom, with a steel frame. People forget a door’s only as tough as its frame. It’ll cost you a bit, but a burglary’ll cost you more.”

“A ‘triple mortar lock’?” Chloe Chetwynd chewed her lip.

Jesus Christ the rich are bloody hopeless. “Look, down at the station we use a contractor. He’s from Newcastle-on-Tyne so you’ll only catch one word in five, but he owes me a favor. Chances are he’ll drop by in the morning if I give him a bell tonight. Would you like me to?”

Chloe Chetwynd did a big dramatic sigh. “Gosh, would you? I’d be so grateful. DIY was never my forté, alas.”

Before I could reply, footsteps came pounding down the side of the house. Two kids were about to appear, running at full pelt, and I even stepped onto the lowest step, to give them a clear run …

… but the footsteps just faded away. Must’ve been kids next door and some acoustic trick. Chloe Chetwynd was giving me an odd look, however. “Did you hear them?”

“Sure I did. Neighbors’ children, right?”

She looked unsure and nothing made sense for a moment. Her grief’s turned her into a bag of nerves, I figured. Inheriting a big old tomb of a house like hers can’t have helped. I regretted not handling her a bit more gently earlier, and gave her my card. “Look, Mrs. Chetwynd, this is my direct line, in case of … anything.”

She gave my card the once-over, then slipped it into her gardening trousers. Against her thigh. “That’s extremely kind. I–I feel safer already.”

The red ivy stuff shivered. “Grief’s a bastard, it really is — pardon my French. It makes everything else harder.” I couldn’t decide what color Chloe Chetwynd’s eyes were. Are. Blue. Gray. Lonely as hell.

The woman asked, “Who did you lose, Detective?”

“Ah, my mum. Leukemia. A long time ago.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘a long time ago.’ ”

I felt all examined. “Did your husband die in an accident?”

“Pancreatic cancer. Stuart lived longer than the doctors predicted, but … In the end, you know …” The evening sun lit the softest fuzz on her upper lip. She swallowed, hard, and looked at her wrist as if there was a watch there, though there wasn’t. “Gosh, look at the time. I’ve detained you long enough, Detective. May I walk you back to the offending door?”

We walked under a tree that’d shed lots of little leaves shaped like fans. I plucked a waist-high weed from the side of the lawn. “Golly gosh,” sighed Mrs. Chetwynd, “I’ve let this poor garden go to wrack and ruin, haven’t I?”

“Nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t put right.”

“I’ll need industrial quantities of the stuff to tame this jungle, alas.”

“I’m surprised you don’t employ a gardener,” I said.

“We did, a Polish chap, but after Stuart died he left to pursue other career opportunities. With a brand-new Flymo.”

I asked, ‘Did you report the theft?”

She looked at her nails. “I just couldn’t face the kerfuffle. There was so much else to see to. Pathetic of me, really, but …”

“I only wish I’d known. So I could’ve helped.”

“That’s very sweet.” We passed under a trellissey-thing with purple and white flowers hanging down. “If it’s not nosey of me,” she asks, “were you in Slade Alley on police business when you found the door? Or were you just passing through, by chance?”

Famous Fred Pink’d slipped my mind the moment I set foot in the garden. “Police business, as it happens.”

“Gosh. Nothing majorly unpleasant, I hope.”

“Majorly daft, I suspect — unless the names ‘Norah Grayer’ or ‘Rita and Nathan Bishop’ mean anything to you, on the off-chance?”

She frowned: “ ‘Norah Grayer’ … no. Odd name. Are the Bishops that husband and wife team who present the breakfast show on ITV?”

“No,” I replied. “Not to worry. It’s a bit of a saga.”

We’d come to the end of the stony path but instead of showing me out, Chloe Chetwynd sat down on a low wall by a sundial. “My frantic social calendar just happens to be empty this evening,” she said, a bit foxily, “if you’re in the mood for telling me the saga, Detective?”

Why hurry back to my poky flat? I got my smokes out of my leather jacket. “May I? And would you?”

“Yes you may; and yes I would. Thank you.”

So I joined her on the low wall, lit one for her, one for me. “Okay, Part One. Rita and Nathan Bishop were a mother and son who lived over near the station, and who disappeared in 1979. Enquiries were made, but when the investigating officer found out that Rita Bishop was up to her eyeballs in debt and had relatives in Vancouver, it was assumed she’d skipped town, and the case sort of petered out.” A light breeze blew the woman’s cigarette smoke into my face, but I didn’t mind. “On to Part Two. Six weeks ago, a man named Fred Pink woke up in the coma ward of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.”

“Now him I do know,” said Chloe Chetwynd. “He was in the Mail on Sunday: ‘The Window-Cleaner Who Came Back From the Dead.’ ”

“That’s the man.” I tapped ash onto the top of the wall where a few ants were crawling around. “When not enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, Fred Pink was down the town library, catching up on the local papers. Which is where he came across an article about the Bishops’ disappearance — and lo and behold, he recognized them. Or thinks he did. Says he even spoke with Rita Bishop, the mum, out there”—I nod at the small black iron door—“in Slade Alley, around three o’clock, October twenty-seventh, 1979. A Saturday.”

Chloe Chetwynd looked politely astonished. “That’s precise.”

“It was an unforgettable day, for him, you see. After Rita Bishop had asked him if he knew where ‘Norah Grayer’s residence’ was, Fred Pink lugged his ladder out of Slade Alley onto Westwood Road, where a speeding taxi knocked him into his nine-year coma.”

“What a story!” Chloe Chetwynd’s sandal, dangling from her big toe, dropped off. “But if this ‘Norah Grayer’ character really is minor gentry, she can’t be that difficult to track down.”

I made a gesture of agreement. “You’d think so, but our searches so far have only drawn blanks. Assuming she exists.”

Chloe Chetwynd inhaled, held the smoke in her lungs, and breathed out. “Well, if she did exist, and did live around here, she’d probably live in Slade House — our house. Mine, that is. But Stuart and I bought the house from people called Pitt, not Grayer, and they’d lived here for years.”

“Since before 1979?” I asked.

“Since before the war, I believe. And as for me, in 1979 I was a History of Art postgrad living in Luxembourg and finishing a thesis on Ruskin. Of course, Detective, you’re more than welcome to bring in the sniffer dogs, or dredge the pond, if you think it’ll help …”

A squirrel darted across the clumpy lawn and vanished into a rhubarb patch. I wondered who the hell Ruskin was. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mrs. Chetwynd. After everything Fred Pink’s been through, my chief super thought we should do him the courtesy of following up his lead, but to be honest, strictly between you and me, we’re not expecting anything to come of it.”

Chloe Chetwynd nodded. “That’s decent of you, to show Mr. Pink you’re taking him seriously. And I do hope that the Bishops are alive and well somewhere.”

“If I were a betting man, I’d put a sizable chunk on them being alive, well and solvent somewhere in British Columbia.” The moon was above the chimneys and TV aerials. My imagination opened one side of its dirty mac and showed me a picture of Chloe Chetwynd squirming on her back, under me. “Well, I really ought to be off. I’ll tell the contractor to come round the main entrance, shall I?”

“Whichever suits.” She stood and walked me the last few steps to the small black iron door. I drummed my fingers on it, wondering whether to go for her phone number, but Chloe Chetwynd then said this: “Mrs. Edmonds made a wise choice of husband, Detective.”

Oho? “That area of my life’s a bloody train wreck, Mrs. Chetwynd. I’m dumped, single, with the bruises to prove it.”

“All the best TV detectives have complex domestic lives. And really, address me as Chloe, if that’s allowed.”

“Off duty, it’s allowed. Off duty, I’m Gordon.”

Chloe toyed with a button on the cuff of her granddad shirt. “That’s settled, then, Gordon. Au revoir.”

I stooped and sort of posted myself through the ridiculously small doorway to get into Slade Alley. We shook hands over the threshold. Over Chloe’s shoulder I thought I saw movement and a blink of light in an upper window of Slade House, but I probably didn’t. I thought of my flat, of the washing-up in the sink, of the leaking radiator, of the copy of Playboy stashed behind my toilet brush, and wished I was inside Slade House now, looking over the twilit garden, knowing Chloe’d soon be coming back, cream-skinned under her clothes. “Get yourself a cat,” I heard myself say.

She smiled and frowned at the same time: “A cat?”

Back on Westwood Road, the cars all had their headlights and wipers on, and raindrops splashed my neck and my not-quite-yet-bald spot. My visit to Chloe Chetwynd hadn’t been exactly as per standard police protocol, I had to admit. I’d lowered my guard, we’d sort of flirted at the end, and Trevor Doolan would be most unchuffed if he’d heard me discuss Fred Pink the way I did; but now and then you meet a woman who makes you do that. But it’s okay, Chloe Chetwynd can keep a secret, I can tell. Julie was a blabbermouth — brash on the outside, emotional jelly on the inside — but Chloe’s the reverse. Chloe’s got this chipped outer shell but an indestructible core. That bit at the end when she smiled, or half smiled … Like when the lights come on at the end of a power cut and you think, Hallelujah! The way we sat down and smoked like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sure, Chloe Chetwynd has a few bob tucked away and her house is worth a fortune, and I don’t have a pot to piss in, but all she’s got in her life now are spiders, mice and memories of a sick husband. I may be an idiot in some respects but when it comes to women, I’m more experienced than most guys. I’ve slept with twenty-two women, from Angie Pike the Sheerness Bike to a Surrey stockbroker’s bored housewife with a thing about handcuffs, and I could tell Chloe Chetwynd was thinking about me like I was thinking of her. As I walked back to my car, I felt fit and slim and strong and good and sure that something had just begun.

“Good evening, here are today’s headlines at six o’clock on Saturday, October the twenty-ninth. Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz announced at a press conference in the White House that the American Embassy in Moscow is to be entirely rebuilt, following the discovery of listening devices in the walls of the building. President Reagan expressed his—” Who gives a shit, honestly? I turn off the radio, get out and lock my car. Same space as seven days ago, smack bang outside The Fox and Hounds. What a godawful day. This morning a piss-head on speed attacked the desk sergeant just as I was passing and it took four of us to drag him to the cell — where the stupid bastard died an hour later. The toxicology report’ll clear us, eventually, but we’re already under the Spotlight of Shame courtesy of the Malik Enquiry — whose initial findings, we found out at lunchtime, have been leaked to the bloody Guardian. Force Ten Fucking Shit Storm Ahoy. Doolan said he’d “do his best” to shield me from the flak. “Do his best”? How half-assed does that sound? To add yet more grit to the Vaseline, a final demand for payment from Dad’s care home arrived before I left for work, along with a final final demand from Access, my flexible friend. I’ll have to extend my overdraft, come Monday. Or try to. The one ray of sunshine to brighten up this nightmare of a day was Chloe Chetwynd calling this afternoon. She sounded nervous at first, but I told her I’d been thinking about her since last Saturday. She said she’d been thinking about me, too — and at least two of my organs went Yes! So after leaving the office I got myself a twenty-quid haircut at a poofter parlor, and drove here via Texaco where they sell carnations and condoms. Be prepared and all that, right? I hurry along the pavement, whistling “When You Wish Upon a Star,” swerving to avoid first a jogger in black and day-glo orange running togs, then a guy my age who’s trundling a pushchair. The brat’s screaming blue bloody murder and the guy’s face is saying, Why oh why oh why did I shoot my wad into an ovulating female? Too late now, pal.

There’s no sign of the traffic warden at the mouth of Slade Alley tonight. Into the cold alley I go, down to the corner, turn left, onward twenty paces, and here we are again: one small black iron door. I give it a hefty shove but tonight it stays shut. No rattle, no give, no nothing. A new frame, concreted in, with freshly laid brickwork along the bottom edge. Top job. You couldn’t even jemmy in a crowbar. I set off down towards the Cranbury Avenue end of the alley to find the main entrance to Slade House, when I hear a click and a thunk from the door. Here she is, stepping out through the munchkin-sized doorway: “Good evening, Detective Inspector.” She’s wearing an Aztecky poncho thing over thigh-hugging black jeans, and holding something against her breasts. I come back, peer closer and see a small ginger cat. “’Ello ’ello ’ello,” I say. “What’s all this, then?”

“Gordon, Bergerac. Bergerac, Gordon.”

“ ‘Bergerac’? As in Jim Bergerac, the TV detective?”

“Don’t say it so incredulously. Getting a cat was your idea, so it seemed appropriate. He’s too cute to be a Columbo, too hairy for a Kojak, too male for Cagney or Lacey, so I settled on Bergerac. Isn’t he adorable?”

I look at the furry bundle. I look at Chloe’s eyes. “Totally.”

“And how about my new improved door, Gordon: will it deter unwelcome visitors, do you think?”

“Unless they’re packing knee-high antitank missiles, yes. You can sleep safe in your bed from now on.”

A little silver shell dangles on a black cord around Chloe Chetwynd’s neck. “Look, it’s so kind of you to drop by. After I put the phone down I got in a tizzy about wasting police time.”

“This isn’t police time. It’s mine. I’ll spend it how I like.”

Chloe Chetwynd holds Bergerac against her soft throat. I smell lavender and smoke and I get that off-road feeling you get when anything’s possible. She’s had her hair done, too. “In that case, Gordon, if I’m not pushing my luck, would you mind inspecting the door from the garden side, too? Just to ensure that my state-of-the-art triple mortice lock meets industry standards …”

Chloe lowers the sizzling side of beef onto her kitchen table. I sniff it in, filling my head with it. The table’s old and massive, like the kitchen. Julie used to drool over pictures of kitchens like this in that magazine she got, Country Living. Oak beams, terra-cotta tiles, recessed spotlights, a view of the sloping garden, fancy blinds, a Welsh dresser with a collection of teapots, a cooker big enough to roast a small child, a Swedish stainless-steel fridge-freezer as big as they have in American films and a built-in dishwasher. There’s a fireplace with a big copper hood over it. ‘You carve the meat,” says Chloe. “That’s the man’s job.”

I get to work with the knife. “This beef smells incredible.”

She brings over the roast veg. “My mother’s recipe: red wine, rosemary, mint, nutmeg, cinnamon, soy, plus a few secret ingredients that I can’t reveal or I’d have to kill you.” Chloe removes the lid: parsnips, spuds, carrots, cubes of pumpkin. “Spiced beef needs a wine with a bit of welly. How about a punchy, dry Rioja?”

I make an It’s fine by me if it’s fine with you face.

“Rioja it is, then. I’m perrritty sure I still have a Tempranillo ’81 stashed away.” When Julie spoke about wine she sounded like a beautician with no O levels aping a wine buff, which is what she was. Chloe sounds like she’s stating facts. She comes back and hands me the bottle and a corkscrew. With a glint in her eye? I twist the pointy bit into the cork and think carnal thoughts until the cork goes Pop! “I love that sound,” says Chloe. “Don’t you? Wine Nazis say that you let these heavy reds breathe for a quarter of an hour, but I say life’s too short. Here, use these glasses …” Their crystal bases trundle over the wood. “Pour away, Jeeves.”

I obey. The wine goes glug — glug-glugglugglugglugglug.

The tiramisu is a stunner, and I say so. Chloe dabs at a fleck of cream on her lip with her napkin. “Not too cloying, not too sweet?”

“Like everything else you’ve fed me, it was perfection. When did you find time to train as a chef?”

Looking pleased, she sips her wine and dabs away the red stain with her napkin. “Flatterer.”

“Flattery? Me? What motive could I possibly have for flattering you? None. There. Case dismissed.”

Chloe pours coffee from a pot shaped like a dragon. “Next time — well, I mean, if you ever want to help me out with my overcatering again — I’ll do you my vodka sorbet. Tonight, I didn’t—”

Right here, right next to us, a girl calls out, “Jonah!”

Clear as a bell. But there’s no girl here. But—

— I heard her. Right here. A girl. She said, “Jonah!”

There’s a clattery noise from the door—

I jump, my chair scrapes, tips and falls over.

The cat-flap’s swinging. The cat runs out.

Then I hear her again: “Jonah?”

I didn’t imagine that.

Again: “Jooo-naaah!”

I’m standing in a fight-or-flight crouch, but Chloe’s not looking shocked, and not looking like I’m a nutcase either. She’s watching me, calm and cool. My shins are trembling. I ask her, “Did you hear that?” My voice is a bit manic.

“Yes.” If anything, she looks relieved. “Yes, I did.”

“A girl,” I check, “right here, in the kitchen.”

Chloe shuts her eyes and nods, slowly.

“But … but you said you didn’t have children.”

Chloe breathes in, breathes out. “They’re not mine.”

Which is clear as mud. Adopted? Invisible? “Who are they?”

“Her name’s Norah. She’s Jonah’s sister. They live here.”

The hairs on my arms are standing up. “I … You … What?”

Chloe takes one of my cigarettes. “You hear a voice; there’s no one here; it’s a very old house. Any thoughts, Detective?”

I can’t say the word “ghost”—but I just heard what I just heard: a girl saying “Jonah” when there’s no girl here.

“Those footsteps you heard last Saturday,” Chloe goes on, “round the house. You thought they were kids next door. Remember?”

I’m cold. I nod once.

“There are no kids living next door, Gordon. That was Norah and Jonah. I think they’re twins. Here. Smoke. Sit down.”

I do as she says, but my mind’s reeling and my fingers are clumsy as I light my cigarette.

“I first noticed them back in January, this year. In the garden, at first, like you did; and like you, I assumed it was neighbors. Then one afternoon when Stuart was flat out and asleep after chemo — Valentine’s Day, as it happens — I was on the stairs when I heard a girl humming on the little landing, by the grandfather clock. But there was nobody there. Then a boy’s voice called up from the doorway, “Norah, your boiled egg’s ready!” And the girl said, “I’ll be down as soon as I’ve wound up the clock!” I thought — or hoped, perhaps — they were kids who’d got in somehow, for a lark, for a dare, but … I was there, on the stairs, for heaven’s sake. By the clock.”

“Did your husband hear them?”

Chloe shakes her head. “Never. Around Easter, Jonah and Norah — the ‘ghosts’—walked right through the kitchen, chattering away about a pony called Blackjack, and Stuart was sitting right where you are. He didn’t even look up from his crossword. I asked, ‘Did you hear that?’ and he replied, ‘Hear what?’ ‘Those voices,’ I said. Stuart gave me a weird and worried look so I pretended I might’ve left a radio on upstairs.” Chloe lights her own cigarette and gazes at the glowing tip. “Stuart was a biochemist, an atheist, and he just didn’t do ghosts. A few weeks later we had a dinner party here, and as I served up the starters I heard Jonah and Norah walk right by, singing, ‘Here comes the bride, a million miles wide’ and giggling like drains. Loud as real children. We had eight guests sitting around the table, but not one of them heard.”

In the fireplace the flames snap. My CID brain telexes in the word schizophrenia. But I heard the voice too, and I sure as heck never heard of shared schizophrenia.

Chloe empties the last of the wine into our glasses. “I was terrified I was losing my marbles, so — without telling Stuart — I visited three separate doctors, had a brain scan, the works. Nothing sinister showed up. I was Stuart’s round-the-clock carer, he was going downhill fast, so two of the three consultants put it down to stress. One told me the voices were caused by my unmet desire for children. I didn’t go back to him.”

I drink the wine. I puff on the cigarette. “So apart from me, nobody else has heard them?”

“That’s right. I–I can’t tell you how relieved I was, last Saturday, when I saw you’d heard them too. How less lonely I felt. God, just to be able to discuss them like this, without being afraid you’ll think I’m a nut … You’ve got no idea, Gordon.”

Blue eyes. Gray eyes. “Hence my invitation?”

A shy little smile. “Not the only reason. Don’t feel exploited.”

“I don’t. Hey, Bergerac sensed them, too. He just legged it.” I pour myself coffee from the silver pot. “Why do you stay here, Chloe? Why don’t you sell up, and move somewhere … less haunted?”

Chloe grimaces the way I’ve noticed she does when faced with a thorny question. “Slade House is home. I feel safe here, and … it’s not as if Norah and Jonah go ‘wooooooh’ or drip ectoplasm or write scary messages in mirrors. I … I’m not even sure they know I’m here. Yes, I hear them, once or twice, every one or two days, but they’re just going about their business.” Chloe balances a teaspoon on a dish. “There’s one other voice I call ‘Eeyore’ because he’s always so negative, but I’ve only heard him a handful of times. He mumbles things like ‘They’re liars’ or ‘Run away’ or stuff that makes no sense, and I suppose he’s a bit disconcerting, but he wouldn’t qualify as a poltergeist. I’m not leaving Slade House just because of him.”

Bergerac rubs his back against my shins. I hadn’t noticed him come back in. “I still think you’re made of pretty stern stuff, Chloe. I mean … well … ghosts.”

Chloe sighs. “Some people keep boa constrictors, or tarantulas: surely that’s weirder and scarier and riskier than my innocuous housemates? I’m not even convinced they’re real ‘ghosts’ at all.”

‘Innocuous’ means ‘harmless,’ if I’m not wrong. If they’re not ghosts, what are they?”

“They’re children, living in their own time, doing their thing, who I overhear. Like the telephone lines of our times have crossed. The wall between our ‘now’ and their ‘now’ is thin. That’s all.”

The big window shows a reflected kitchen with a ghostly Chloe and me superimposed onto a dark garden. “If I hadn’t heard them myself,” I say, “I’d be thinking you’d watched too many episodes of Tales of the Unexpected or something. But … I did hear them. Have you thought of finding out who used to live in Slade House? Maybe you’d find a pair of twins called Jonah and Norah.”

She rolls up her napkin. “I’ve thought about it, but since Stuart died, I just haven’t had the get-up-and-go.” Chloe makes an apologetic face. I realize I want to kiss it.

Bergerac nestles into my crotch. May his claws stay retracted. “The property records at the town archives go back to the 1860s,” I tell Chloe. “We — CID, I mean — consult them now and then. I’ve got a tame archivist called Leon who looks into certain matters for me, without asking the whys and wherefores. A big old house like this leaves footprints, I’m sure. Shall I have a quiet word?”

“First a door-fixer, now an archivist.” Chloe looks impressed. “You’re a one-man Yellow Pages. Yes please. I’d be jolly grateful.”

“Leave it with me.” I stroke Bergerac. He purrs.

My host reties her hair. “Honestly, Gordon. Most men would be dashing for the door by now.”

I breathe out a cloud of smoke. “I’m not most men.”

Me and Chloe look at each other longer than you’re normally allowed to. She reaches over and puts my dessert plate onto hers. “I knew that telephoning you earlier was a smart move.”

I wish I had a snappier line than, “More coffee?”

“Golly, no. I shan’t be able to sleep for hours.”

Exactly, I think. “Then let me do the washing-up.”

“That’s why God made dishwashers, my friend.”

I notice her wedding ring is off. “Then I’m jobless.”

Blue eyes. Gray eyes. “Not necessarily.”

Rasping and gasping for breath, soaked, salty and sticky, I collapse onto her pillow. I’m fed, I’m fed, I’m fed, and the finest thing to be in God’s Creation is a youngish fed male. We just lie there for a while until our breathing and heart rates slow down a little. I say, “If you let me have a re-run, I’ll pace myself a bit better.” Chloe tells me, “Make an appointment, I’ll see if I can squeeze you in,” which makes me laugh so my deflating truncheon slips out. She gives me a fistful of tissues and rolls onto her side, dabbing her own loins and wrapping herself in the gluey sheet. She didn’t tell me to use a condom, so I didn’t: a bit of a risk, but it’s her risk, not mine and any successful businessman’ll tell you, risk transfer is the name of the game. The four-poster bed is hung with maroon curtains so everything’s warm and dark and smothered. I tell her, “Well. Your triple mortice lock most definitely meets industry standards.”

She biffs me gently with the back of her hand.

“Serious crime, that — assaulting a police officer.”

“Ooh. Will you get out your handcuffs?”

“Only in my smuttiest dreams.”

Chloe kisses my nipple. “Then sleep.”

“Fat chance of that, lying next to a naked goddess.”

She kisses my eyelids. “Sweet dreams, Detective.”

I yawn, enormously. “I’m honestly not sleepy …”

Next time I wake, she’s gone. My meat and two veg are simmering nicely. In the walls, ancient plumbing’s groaning and water’s slapping the floor of a nearby shower. I find my watch under a pillow: 1:30. The wee small hours. No problem, it’s Sunday. I’m not due in to the office ‘til Tuesday. Bugger Tuesday. Bugger work. Bugger the Malik Enquiry. Bugger Trevor Doolan. Bugger the Great British Public. Me and Chloe should stay in and do this all Sunday, all week, all month … Only something’s niggling me. What? A thought. This one: why is this classy, clever, sexy-as-hell female falling into bed with a guy she hardly knows? This happens in Pornland or in men’s bullshittery, but here in the real world, women like Chloe simply don’t shag men on a second encounter. Do they?

Hang on, Gordon Edmonds, hang on. “Second encounter”? This is your fifth visit to Slade House, you plonker. Count the meals: on the first Saturday, Chloe cooked steak; second Saturday, cod on shredded potatoes; venison and Guinness pie on the third; last week was pheasant; and tonight, roast beef. There. See? Five dinners, five Saturdays, five bottles of wine, and five long talks for hours about big stuff and small stuff and stuff in between: childhoods, attitudes, politics; her deceased husband and my ex-wife; John Ruskin, the Victorian scholar of art. You’ve been phoning each other every night just to say “Goodnight” and “Sweet dreams” and “Can’t wait ’til Saturday.” It’s not been a long courtship, but it’s been intense, sincere and not remotely slutty or porny. You’re a good-looking cop and you’re amazing in bed. What’s the problem? Chloe Albertina Chetwynd loves you.

I don’t love her, not yet, but love grows out of sex, in my experience. The more you get into a woman, the more you get into her. Who knows? We could end up getting married. Imagine owning Slade House, or half owning it. Who cares about three little spooks? The fact that I hear them makes me special in Chloe’s eyes. Slade House is way bigger than Trevor Doolan’s executive home up on his hill with his well-paid Conservative Club neighbors. If the Malik Enquiry throws me to the wolves, Slade House’d be my lifeboat, my Fuck Off money. £100,000? £120,000? Fortunes change hands every day, all the time, via business, via the football pools, via crime or yes, via marriage. I’ll give Chloe security and fill the man-shaped hole in her life: she’ll offer me financial security. Seems like a fair deal. “Goooooorrrrrrr-donnn!” Her voice finds me from a nearby room. “Are you awake?”

I shout back to her, ‘I am now — where are you?”

“Dans la douche, and I can’t unscrew this shampoo …”

You cheeky little minx. “Oh, can’t you indeed?”

“I’m a damsel in distress, Gordon. Up the stairs.”

There’s a man’s furry brown dressing gown on the bed. Probably Stuart’s, but hey, now I’ve had his wife, why should he care if I have his dressing gown as well? I put it on, slide off the bed and slip through the thick red drapes, cross the odd round room and find myself on a square landing. To my left’s a grandfather clock, to my right, stairs lead down to the hallway, and up ahead, more stairs climb past some pictures to a pale door at the top of the house where a soapy Chloe Chetwynd awaits her Knight in Shining Armor. “Are you coming, Gordon?” Oh, I will be, I will be. Up I climb, two steps at a time, past a portrait of a teenager in a beaten-up leather jacket, with dark oily hair and narrow eyes like he’s half Chinese. The next picture is of a young woman dolled up to the nines and with a honey-blonde hairdo like a backing singer from a sixties girl band. She’s got a dreamy smile that reminds me of Julie when she wasn’t being a neurotic bitch so I stop and brush her lips with mine, just ’cause I can. The third portrait up from the landing’s of a boy of about thirteen. Sandy hair, big nose, sulky, not at ease in his skin, or that tweed jacket and bow-tie that you suspect his pushy mother made him—

It’s Nathan Bishop. It can’t be. It is. My heart’s juddering and I feel sick and a bit weightless. Nathan Bishop, as seen by Fred Pink in Slade Alley in 1979. Nathan Bishop, whose photo Fred Pink cut out of the newspaper. Trevor Doolan got Debs to photocopy it and pin it above our desks, so Famous Fred Pink could see how seriously the Thames Valley Force was taking his lead. She’s lying, says a sulky voice in my ear canal, clear as anything. I jump; nearly fall; crouch; look around. Nobody. She’ll take your life, and more …

Stairs going up; stairs going down; nobody’s here.

I try to un-tense myself. I imagined it. That’s all.

You may find a weapon in the cracks, says the voice.

This one’s not like Jonah or Norah in the kitchen. This voice is talking to me. I don’t know how I know but I know.

The cracks they throw the scraps down, says the boy.

Cracks? Scraps? Weapon? I manage to mutter, “Who are you?” but as I’m saying it to the portrait of Nathan Bishop, the smarter part of me thinks it knows.

I’m not a lot, says the boy. I’m my own left-overs.

“Why will I—” what am I doing, talking to a picture of a vanished boy? “—why’ll I need a weapon?”

The grandfather clock’s tocking, far far below.

It’s in my head. It’s not. It hurts too much.

For you, it’s too late, says the boy. But pass it on.

“Pass it on to who?” I ask the voice that may or may not be real.

The next guest … I’m finished now … I’m all used up.

I say, “Hello?” but the boy’s gone. I crawl backwards up the stairs, away from Nathan Bishop’s portrait, until my eyes lock onto the next one which I also recognize instantly ’cause it’s me, Gordon Edmonds. I ought to be totally freaked out by this, but there’s only so many shocks you can take before your, I dunno, circuits burn out. So I just gape, like a total bloody lemon. I gape at the more-real-than-real picture of Gordon Edmonds, in a brown furry dressing gown, with my buzz-cut hair, my retreating hairline, my kind-of-leaner-fitter-better-looking-Phil-Collins face, with bloody creepy skin-tone blanks where my eyes should be. I stare until I think, You should get out of this house. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. But that’s idiotic as well as chickenshit. Run off, ’cause Chloe painted your portrait? I try to think, but it’s not easy. My brain’s sort of numb. If Chloe painted my portrait, she painted the others. If Chloe painted the others, she painted Nathan Bishop. Meaning she lied about not knowing his name. Meaning …

Chloe’s a killer? Get a grip. I’ve interviewed three or four serial killers, and Chloe’s nothing like those feces-gobbling fucks. Look again. Yes, Chloe painted me as a surprise, but it doesn’t follow that she painted the other pictures. The other pictures look like they were painted a long time ago. They must have been hanging here when Chloe and Stuart bought the place from the Pitts. That explains it. Sort of. They don’t have titles or signatures, so Chloe couldn’t’ve known she’s passed Nathan Bishop every time she uses these stairs. And I didn’t show her the boy’s picture last week in the garden: all I did was tell her his name.

What about the voice I just heard, warning me to get out?

What about it? Just ’cause you hear a ghostly voice, that doesn’t mean you have to believe it. Maybe the voice I just heard wasn’t Nathan Bishop but the one Chloe called Eeyore. Anyway, how do I know I heard it? What if I only imagined it?

Here’s what you do: get Chloe out of the shower, tell her she owns a portrait of Nathan Bishop, assure her she’s not a suspect, and first thing tomorrow call Chief Super Doolan at home. He won’t be best pleased at first, and it’ll be a bit embarrassing about shagging Chloe, but when Doolan learns that Fred Pink’s lead might not be such a neon-bright red herring after all, he’ll change his tune soon enough.

Sorted, then. In we go.

But on the other side of the pale door, I find not a bathroom with Chloe in a shower, but a long dark attic. A long dark attic that’s some sort of … prison? Yes. Three-quarters of it’s caged off by thick, sturdy bars, an inch thick and an inch apart. I can’t see how far back the attic goes ’cause it’s so dark. A faint bit of light comes in from two skylights, on the “free” side of the bars above where I am, but that’s it. The attic smells of bad breath and pine disinfectant, a lot like the cells down the station. My thumb finds a switch to flick, and a light comes on behind the bars. It’s a weak bulb, high up. I make out a bed, a washbasin, a sofa, a table, a chair, a toilet cubicle with the door ajar, an exercise bike and someone stirring on the bed, half hidden in blankets and shadow. The attic’s only about five meters wide but it goes back a long way, maybe the full width of Slade House. I press my face against the bars to peer in the best I can and I say, “Hello?”

He or she — I can’t see which — doesn’t reply. A mad relative? How legal is any of this? I’m going to have to report it in the morning.

I try again. “Hello? What’re you doing up here?”

I hear breathing, and the camp-bed squeak.

“Do you speak English? Do you need any help? Do—”

A woman’s voice cuts in: “Are you real?” A dry, brittle voice.

Not the sanest opening question. The bed’s halfway down the attic, and I can’t see much — a cheekbone, a hand, a shoulder, a flop of gray hair. “My name’s Gordon Edmonds, and yes, I’m real.”

She sits up in bed and hugs her knees. “Dream-people always say they’re real, so pardon me for not believing you.” The woman sounds frail and sad but well spoken. “Once I dreamed that Charlie Chaplin came to rescue me with a pair of giant nail-clippers.” She squints my way with a face that hasn’t smiled for years. “Vyvyan Ayrs drilled a hole in the roof, once. He strapped me onto his hang-glider, and we flew over the English Channel to Zedelghem. I cried when I woke up.” A radiator groans. “Gordon Edmonds. You’re new.”

“Yes, I am.” She’s talking like a mental case. “So … are you a patient?”

She scowls. “If you’re real, you’ll know who I am.”

“Not true, I’m afraid. I’m real, and I don’t know you.”

The woman’s frail voice stiffens with bitterness: “The Monster wants me to think I’m being rescued, doesn’t she? It’s her little entertainment. Tell her I’m not playing.”

“Who wants you to think you’re being rescued?”

“The Monster’s the Monster. I don’t say her name.”

Her name? A nasty thought creeps up — Chloe — but there’ll be a logical explanation. “Sweetheart, I’m a copper. Detective Gordon Edmonds, Thames Valley Force, CID. Can you just tell me why you’re here? Or at least, why you think you’re here?”

“A detective in a dressing gown. Undercover, is it?”

“It doesn’t bloody matter what I’ve got on — I’m a copper.”

She gets out of bed and floats towards the bars in a nightie. “Liar.”

I step back, just in case she’s got a knife. “Love, please. I … just want to know what’s going on. Tell me your name.”

One mad eye appears in the inch between two bars. “Rita.”

The sentence says itself like a conjurer’s hanky pulled out of my mouth: “Oh, sweet bloody hell, don’t tell me you’re Rita Bishop …”

The woman blinks. “Yes. As you know perfectly well.”

I peer closer, and summon up the other photocopied picture Debs pinned above our desks. Oh, Jesus. Rita Bishop’s aged, badly, but it’s her. “After all these years,” her breath smells vinegary, “does the Monster downstairs still get a kick from these pantomimes?”

I feel like I’ve lost half my blood. “Have you—” I’m afraid of the answer “—have you been in this attic since 1979?”

“No,” she sneers. “First they put me up in Buckingham Palace; then a fortune-teller’s booth on Brighton pier; then Willy Wonka’s—”

“Okay! Okay.” I’m trembling. “Where’s Nathan? Your son?”

Rita Bishop shuts her eyes and forces out her words: “Ask her! Ask Lady Norah Grayer, or whatever name she’s going by this week. She’s the one who lured us to Slade House; who drugged us; who locked us up; who took Nathan away; who won’t say if my son’s still alive or not!” She folds over and lies in a silent crying heap.

My mind’s jolted and clattery: Chloe Chetywnd? Norah Grayer? Same woman? How? How? The paintings? Why? Why bring a CID officer up to bed? Why lure him up the stairs where he’ll see the paintings? Makes no sense. What I do know is that Slade House isn’t a police station, a prison or a psychiatric ward, and it looks very like we have a case of illegal imprisonment. Ordinarily — ha, “ordinarily”—I’d go, get back-up and warrants and come back, but in this mad bugger’s scenario, where I may—may—have just shagged a thirty-one-year-old killer-slash-abductress-slash-whatever-the-fuck-she-is, I’d rather get Rita Bishop out first and call in a Code Ten to Slade House after. If I’m wrong and Trevor Doolan de-bollocks me then so be it. “Mrs. Bishop: do you know where the key is?”

She’s still a softly sobbing mess on the floor.

I notice the sound of the shower’s stopped.

“Mrs. Bishop — help me help you—please.”

The woman lifts her head and fires hate-rays at me: “As if you’ll just unlock this door after nine years. As if.”

For Chrissakes. “If I am who I say I am, you’ll be out of Slade House in two minutes and I swear on all that’s holy, Mrs. Bishop, I’ll have armed officers in here within thirty minutes and ‘the Monster’ in custody, and in the morning CID and Scotland Yard and Forensics on Nathan’s trail, so will you please just tell me where the key is? Right now I’m your only chance of seeing your son again.”

Something in my voice persuades Rita Bishop to give me a chance. She sits up. “The key’s on the hook. Right behind you. The Monster likes me to see it.”

I turn around: a long, thin, shiny key. I take it, and fumble, and drop it. It hits the floorboard with a pure note. I pick it up and see the steel square in the cage door and push the key into the keyhole. It’s well oiled and the door swings open and Rita Bishop staggers onto her feet and backs off and sways forwards and stares like she can’t believe it. “Come on, Mrs. Bishop,” I whisper, “out you come. We’re leaving.”

The prisoner takes uncertain steps to the cage door where she grips my hand, and steps out. “I, I …” Her breathing’s all raspy.

“Easy does it,” I tell her. “It’s okay. Do you know if … if ‘she,’ ‘they,’ if they’ve got weapons?”

She can’t answer. She’s gripping my dressing gown, quivering. “Promise me, promise me, I’m not dreaming you.”

“I promise. Let’s go.”

Her fingers dig into my wrist. “And you’re not dreaming me?”

I stay patient: if I’d been locked up for nine years, I’d be off my rocker too. “I guarantee it. Now let’s get out of here.”

She releases me. “Look at this, Detective.”

“Mrs. Bishop, we need to leave.”

Ignoring me, she holds up a lighter.

Her thumb flicks and a thin flame …

… grows longer, paler and still as a freeze-frame. It’s not a lighter any more, it’s a candle, on a chunky metal base with writing all over it, Arabic or Hebrew or Foreign. The cage has gone. All the furniture’s gone. Rita Bishop’s gone. The candle’s the only source of light. The shrunken attic’s black as inside a coffin deep inside a blocked-up cave. I’m kneeling, I’m paralyzed, and I don’t know what’s happening. I try to move but no joy. Not even a finger. Not even my tongue. My body’s the cage now, and I’m the one locked in. The only things working are my eyes and my brain. Work it out, then. Nerve gas? A stroke? I’ve been Mickey Finned? God only knows. Clues, then, Detective? There’re three faces in the dark. Straight ahead, across the candle, there’s me in a dead man’s dressing gown. A mirror, obviously. On my left there’s Chloe, in a hooded padded robe thing. On my right there’s … a male Chloe. Chloe’s twin, I’m guessing — this blond guy, dressed in a robe thing like Chloe’s, handsome in a sort of gay model Hitler Youth way. Neither of them is moving. A few inches from the candle-flame there’s a brownish moth, just frozen in the air, frozen in time. I’m not dreaming. That’s about all I’m sure of. So is this the story of how Detective Gordon Edmonds lost his mind?

After some time’s passed, I don’t know how much, the candle hisses and its white flame sways this way and that. The moth flaps around, in and out of the dark; now I see it, now I don’t. “You’re smirking, Brother,” says Chloe, if that’s her real name. This woman has the same face as the one who served me tiramisu but her voice before was woolen, now it’s a rusty jackknife.

“I am not smirking,” objects the man, moving his legs like they’ve got pins and needles.

I try to move too. I still can’t. I try to speak. I can’t.

“You’re a damned liar, Jonah,” says Chloe. She holds up her hands like they’re a pair of gloves she can’t make up her mind about. “I didn’t smirk when you serviced that hairdresser two cycles ago. And you really did exchange fluids; I only threw this dog-on-heat”—she gives me a disgusted, sideways look—“an imaginary bone.”

“If I smiled,” says the man, “it was a smile of pride at your performance in my sub-orison. You played the neurotic widow to perfection. The attic cage was one of my finest mises en scène, I think we’ll agree, but Meryl Streep herself could not have played poor Mrs. Bishop with finer aplomb. Why, I scarcely noticed the prickly creature, all those years ago. Her voice hurt my ears. Why the long face, Sister? Yet another Open Day has gone swimmingly, our Operandi has proven itself robust, our pheasant is plucked and basted, yet you’re looking all … vinegary.”

“The Operandi is an improvised hotch-potch, too reliant—”

“Norah, I beg you, we’re about to dine; can’t we just—”

“—too reliant upon luck, Jonah. Upon nothing going wrong.”

The man — Jonah — looks at his sister — Norah — with fond smugness. “For fifty-two years, our souls have wandered that big wide world out there, possessing whatever bodies we want, living whatever lives we wish, while our fellow birth-Victorians are all dead or dying out. We live on. The Operandi works.”

“The Operandi works provided our birth-bodies remain here in the Lacuna, freeze-dried against world-time, anchoring our souls in life. The Operandi works provided we recharge the Lacuna every nine years by luring a gullible Engifted into a suitable orison. The Operandi works provided our guests can be duped, Banjaxed and drawn into the Lacuna. Too many ‘provided’s, Jonah. Yes, our luck’s held so far. It won’t hold forever.”

I’ve got no idea what they’re on about, but Jonah looks properly pissed off. “Why this illuminating lecture now, Sister?”

“We need to make the Operandi proof against mischance and enemies.”

“What enemies, Sister? Thanks to my insistence on isolation, not even the Shaded Way know about us. Our life-support system works: to tamper with it would be the danger. Now, supper is served.” Jonah looks my way. “That would be you. Are you ready to die?”

I try but I can’t move, or fight, or beg. I can’t even shit myself.

“You’ve stopped breathing,” Jonah tells me, matter-of-factly.

No no no, I must be breathing, I think. I’m still conscious.

“Not for much longer,” says Jonah. “After four minutes without oxygen, the brain damage becomes irreversible, and although I don’t have my watch on me, I’d say you’ve had two. You’d die after six minutes, but we intervene prior to the final agony. We’re not monsters.”

I feel like I’m plunging upwards. What did I do to deserve this?

“What does ‘Deserve’ have to do with anything?” Norah Grayer lifts her sharp eyebrows. “Did the pig whose smoked flesh you ate at breakfast ‘deserve’ her fate? The question’s irrelevant. You desired bacon and she couldn’t escape the abbatoir. We desire your soul to power our Operandi, and you can’t escape our Lacuna. That’s it.”

Men who scare easily don’t last long in the Force, but now I’m scared as hell. Although religion always struck me as daft, suddenly it’s all I’ve got: If they’re soul-stealers, pray to God. How does it go? “Our Father …”

“Splendid idea,” says Jonah. “I’ll do you a deal, Detective. If you recite the Lord’s Prayer from start to finish — Book of Common Prayer version — you win a Get Out of Jail Free card. Go on. See how far you get.”

“This is juvenile, Brother,” sighs Norah.

“Fair’s fair, he should have a chance. On your marks, Plod; get set; ‘Our Father, which art in heaven …’ Go on.”

This Jonah’s a skunk and a snake, but I’ve got no choice. “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thou name—”

“Was that a ‘thou’ or a ‘thy’ you quoth?” asks Jonah.

I have to play this bastard’s game: I think, “Thy.”

“Bravo! Onwards, onwards. ‘Hallowed be thy name.’”

What’s next? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and lead us not into temptation, and forgive us our trespassers, as we—”

“Ooooo! ‘Trespassers’ as in ‘Git orf my larrrnd!’ or ‘trespasses’ as in ‘transgressions’? Former or latter? Person or act?”

Jesus, I want to glass his sodding face. I think, “The act.”

“Plod’s on a roll! Forgive us our trespasses … ”

“As we forgive those who … who … who …”

“What’s this? A thought-stutter or an owl impression?”

“Who trespass against us. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.” I’ve done it. I look at him.

“You botched it, Plod. Alas, it’s ‘forgive them that trespass against us’; temptation comes after trespasses; and you forgot the ‘deliver us from evil’ bit. Ironically.”

I’m going to die.

I don’t want to die.

But I’m going to die.

“The point of that little interlude being …?” asks Norah.

“A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste. Ready when you are, Sister?”

Norah mutters “I’m always ready,” and the Grayer Twins begin tracing symbols in the air. They’re chanting, too, a chant in a language I don’t know, and something appears above the candle-flame, a bit above eye-level: a bruise in the air, a glowing lump, lit reddish from inside, beating like a heart, big as a brain. Worms or roots or veins snake out from it. Some grow towards the twins, and several come my way and I try to pull my head back or swat them away or even shriek or shut my eyes but I can’t; they enter my mouth, my ears, my nostrils, like sharp tiny fingers, and get to work inside me. I feel a drill-bit of pain in my forehead, and in the mirror I see a black dot there … Not blood. Seconds pass. Stuff oozes out and hovers there, a blob the size and shape of a golf ball, right in front of my eyes. It’s almost see-through, like gel, or egg-white, and filled with shiny grains of dust, or galaxies, or …

God, it’s beautiful.

Jesus, it shimmers.

It’s alive, it’s mine …

… the twins’ faces loom up, Jonah to my left, Norah to my right, smooth-skinned, hungry, pursing their lips like whistlers, sucking, so sharply, that my soul — what else could it be? — is slowly but surely stretched like Blu Tack. Half my soul streams like smoke into Norah’s mouth, and half into Jonah’s. I’d sob, if I could, or I’d say I’ll get you I’ll kill you I’ll make you pay, but I’m just the residue of Gordon Edmonds now. I’m his husk. I’m his flesh-and-skin suit. The twins gasp and let out soft groans like junkies shooting up when the drug hits their bloodstreams. Now there’s a rushing noise louder than the end of the world. Now it’s quiet like the morning after the end of the world. The floating brain-thing’s gone; its air-veins are gone too. Like nothing was ever there. The Grayer Twins kneel across the candle from each other, as still as the flame that never moves. The mirror’s empty. Look at the scorched tiny papery scrap. There, on the floorboard. The end of the moth.