‘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.