My hands got numb quickly. It was freezing cold; colder than at any point in the past few days. I jemmied the door some more, digging in deeper and deeper each time, fighting the cold as much as the wood. Then, finally, a whole panel came loose in my hands. I threw it to one side and it landed in the snow with a dull thud.
I waved a hand inside the annexe and waited. Ten seconds passed. No alarm. I reached in, flipped the lock on the handle and pulled what was left of the door open.
It was dark inside, but I’d brought a penlight. I went for the desk first. There were three drawers, all locked. I put the penlight between my teeth and dug the knife into the top drawer. It sprang open without too much effort. Inside were a couple of pens, some envelopes and a church newsletter. The second drawer was empty. In the third were four slide files, all empty.
Next to the door were the crates Michael hadn’t unpacked.
I stopped for a moment. Listened. I knew the weather would help me: snow would crunch under foot, so I’d be able to hear any approach. In fact, the night was so still now, the noise would probably carry all the way up from the main road.
Turning back to the first crate, I flipped the top on it. It was a mess, crammed with books, magazines, and folders full of notes and photos. I looked through the photos. Michael was in all of them: with his mum and dad; with what could have been a girlfriend or a sister; with some friends at a twenty-first birthday party. One was taken at a service, him high up in the pulpit, one hand on a Bible.
Below that, half sliding out of an envelope, was another picture.
A boy running around on a patch of grass, chasing a football. Jade had the same one. I flipped it over. Written on the back was exactly the same message: ‘this is the reason we do it.’
Chucking the photos back in on top of the books, I pulled the crate off the one below. It landed on the floor with a bang. Inside the second was more of the same. Then, at the edge, I noticed a small address book with Contact numbers written on it.
Inside, names were listed alphabetically, every page full of addresses. Most were local — Redbridge, Aldersbrook, Leytonstone, Woodford, Clayhall — but others were further afield, in Manchester and Birmingham. I flicked through the book, stopping briefly under each letter to see whether I recognized any names. I didn’t.
Until I got to Z.
Right at the back of the book I found a name I knew: Zack. I got out my notepad and flipped back through the pages to the names I’d collected from the flat in Brixton: Paul, Stephen, Zack.
The listing for him didn’t have a surname, but it did have an address in Bristol — and something else.
A line leading to a second name: Alex.
25
It took three hours to get to Bristol. By the time I came off the motorway, it was two o’clock in the morning. I needed rest desperately. I drove for a while, heading deeper and deeper into the deserted city, until I found a dark spot next to a railway yard. I backed in, under a bridge, and kept the heat on for an hour. Then, eventually, I turned off the engine, climbed on to the back seat and fell asleep.
I woke suddenly. It was light — almost midday. Fresh snow had fallen, settling beyond the bridge and all around the car. I was freezing cold, disorientated for a moment, as if I’d been pulled too quickly from my sleep. Maybe this was the way it was going to be now: every sleep bookended by the feeling I was being watched.
I got back into the front seat, fired up the engine and moved on.
The address was for a house in St Philips. It was an ugly area and an ugly street, bordered by a wasteland of broken concrete and an imposing Victorian factory building. I did a circuit in the car, up to the main road, back around and then down past the house. The curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of life.
I parked within view of the house and waited, low in my seat, looking out along the road. After a couple of minutes a bus wheezed to a stop at the end of the street. An old couple got off. Behind them a mother and her two children, huddled together, their jackets zipped up to their chins. They veered left, into the side road about halfway down, but the old couple continued along the street towards me. When they passed the car, they looked in, eyeing me suspiciously.
Ten minutes passed.
Another bus pulled up, and then a third. More people got off, all disappearing into houses on the street, or passing the car and moving on somewhere else. When it got quiet again, I fired up the engine and turned up the heaters.
About thirty minutes later, an Astra entered the street from behind me. I watched it approach in the rear-view mirror and then brake, reversing into the space in front of me. It bumped up on to the pavement and then off again, stopping about a foot from the front of my hire car. A woman moved around inside, the hood up on her jacket. She glanced in her rear-view mirror, picked something up, then got out.
Wind carved up the road. Some tendrils of hair that had escaped from her hood whipped around her face. She pushed the door shut with her backside, trying to juggle a shopping bag and her keys. On the keyring I could see a silver crucifix, dangling down, brushing against the side of the door as she turned the lock.
She headed up the street. Her hood ballooned out as the wind came again. It was stronger this time and she momentarily lost her balance. Her foot drifted from the pavement to the road and the shopping bag suddenly hit the floor, fruit scattering everywhere. She stopped, looked along the street, then bent down and started picking it up. When the wind came a third time, she put a hand flat to the floor to balance herself and her hood blew back. A tangled mop of black hair.
She glanced in my direction. Stopped. Looked away.
I watched her start to pick up the fruit again, quicker this time. Suddenly, she looked nervous, grabbing hold of an apple only to drop it, then doing the same thing a second time. Another apple rolled all the way across the street, then another.
Then, strangely, she straightened and started walking away, leaving the fruit rolling around in the gutter. She didn’t care about it any more, barely had hold of the shopping bag, and was trying to sort through her keys with her spare hand as she walked. More fruit escaped from the bag, tumbling into the road. She didn’t look back. She just carried on, finally stopping when she got to her house.
It was the house I’d been watching.
She put the bag down and started going through the keys properly, one after the other, flipping them until she found the right one. Then she looked in my direction once more. Her head didn’t move. Just her eyes.
She was looking right at me.
And then it hit me.
Her hair was a different colour, longer and more unruly. Her face was pale and serious. Older. Weathered. And her nose looked different: it was more tapered, thinned out. Before, when I’d seen her working in Angel’s, it had been wider, less shapely. But it was definitely her.
It was Evelyn.
I got out of the car, set the alarm and started towards her. As I got closer, her movements became frantic. She couldn’t unlock the door. From behind me I heard a voice, distant at first, then louder. I looked back and saw a black guy coming towards me, shouting, ‘Oi! You can’t park here!’ I ignored him. When I turned back, Evelyn had opened the door. She left the shopping bag where it was, on the step, and ran inside.