“He looked like a fucking little rich kid to me. With a wallet full of Daddy’s money in his back pocket, and he went down in one of these fucking basements. I saw him. I told you that before!”
“All right. So what if he fucking did. He probably lives there.”
“Maybe. But I bet the little cunt was hiding. Probably still is. He went down this one or the one next door.”
“Well, I’m not fucking going down after him. We’ll end up in the nick for burglary.”
Thomas heard the sound of one set of footsteps going off toward the main road. The other youth was still standing by the gate at the top of the steps.
“Cunt,” he said. “Fucking gutless cunt.” He kicked the gate hard so that it hit the wall behind. Then he ran away into the night.
Thomas waited a moment before he came back out of the vault heading toward the steps. Just as he did so the curtains in front of him opened and he instinctively crouched down under the windowsill where he could not be seen.
As he bent over, the house key fell out of his shirt pocket and hit the concrete with a loud clink. Thomas froze, certain that Greta or whoever it was on the other side of the window must have heard the noise. He wondered how he could explain his presence bent over underneath her window and then gave up the attempt. He was eavesdropping and he couldn’t deny it. How he got down into the basement was irrelevant.
It was soon clear, though, that neither Greta nor her friend had heard the key hit the ground. The sound must have been drowned out by the greater noise of the sash window being lifted up as far as it would go. Thomas could now hear her voice inches away from his head.
“I can’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything. There’ve been burglars up there before, and I’m not having them stealing my computer. Mrs. Posh won’t hear. She takes sleeping tablets. And the boy’s at the top of the house.”
If Greta could have leaned out far enough, she would have touched Thomas, but the bars on the window prevented this. He was safe until she opened the door of her apartment, but from the sound of it that was precisely what she was about to do.
Thomas did not hear any reply from the other person in the room because the next moment Greta pulled the window down. There didn’t seem to be enough time to get away before the door opened, but he had to try. Picking up the key, he turned and crept up the steps with his back against the wall. There was no sound from below.
At the top he had no choice but to run in front of the house under the streetlight so that anyone looking out of the basement window could not have failed to see him. But when he stopped to fit the key in the lock with a trembling hand, he still heard nothing. It seemed like a miracle.
Thomas pulled the front door shut behind him and stood in the dark hallway trying to fight back the panic that was once again turning his legs to jelly. Afterward he realized that it was this moment of inactivity that had saved him from discovery. Turning on the light would have given him away, but as it was, Greta came through the door at the end of the hall to find everything in unsuspicious darkness, and Thomas had time, while she turned the key in the lock, to escape into the room she used as an office. He half closed the door behind him.
There were tiny red lights twinkling on the computers and the other machines in the room, but they didn’t illuminate it sufficiently to enable Thomas to see any hiding place other than behind the thick curtains drawn across the tall windows. He moved slowly, taking care not to trip over any wires or bump into the circular table in the center of the room that he remembered from his afternoon tour of inspection. It seemed an eternity away now.
Thomas realized as he stood by the curtains in the office that he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. Clearly his experience with the youths in the street had shaken him, but it was Greta’s strange words, the invisible second person inside the basement flat, and the closeness of their presence that had unnerved him so badly.
Outside in the hall Thomas heard footsteps, so he ducked behind the curtains and stood up against one of the front windows. On the other side of the room the owner of the footsteps — Greta it must be — turned on the light. She wasn’t moving, but Thomas could sense her standing in the doorway looking into the room. Involuntarily he turned his head away to look out into the street and in the same instant clapped a hand over his mouth to strangle a gasp that had risen in his throat. There was a man standing under the streetlight with his back to the house. Thomas did not know why he knew with such certainty that this was the person whom Greta had been entertaining in her flat two minutes before. He just knew.
The man was wearing tight blue jeans and a white, collarless shirt. He had a belt too, thick and black, and Thomas had a sudden vision of the man taking it off his narrow hips and holding it above his head like a whip. There was something about his body, about his posture, that suggested violence. Thomas could sense the strength of the man’s muscles as he rocked back and forward on his heels like a boxer or a dancer even. He felt the man’s quickness. The stranger’s black hair was long, tied back in a ponytail. Without the ponytail Thomas wouldn’t have seen the scar that ran from behind the man’s right jawbone down into his strong bull neck.
Thomas was terrified. He didn’t know how long he stood there with Greta behind him on the other side of the curtain and the man in front, who had only to turn his head for a moment to see Thomas in the window. In reality it was only a few seconds before Greta turned out the light and closed the door, but it seemed forever to Thomas as he fought to hold his breath and willed the man with the scar not to turn around. And he didn’t. He remained standing by the streetlight. Several times he looked to his right up toward the main road, but he never looked back at the house. Not while Thomas was standing at the window.
When he heard the door to the basement close behind Greta, Thomas stepped back into the room and the thick curtain fell into place behind him, shutting out the streetlight and the man standing beneath it.
He began slowly to grope his way across the dark room. He put his hands out in front of him to feel for obstacles and felt them trembling until they met the sideboard, which took him step by faltering step out into the hall.
Thomas was only halfway up the stairs before his legs gave way under him outside the door of his mother’s room. He could hear her even breathing, but he did not go inside. Not too long ago he would have gotten into the bed beside her seeking comfort from the Suffolk storms, but now everything was changed. This was London and he was no longer a boy, whatever Greta Grahame might say to the contrary.
Thomas brushed the tears from his eyes and took hold of the banister. At the top of the house he washed his face and then lay down on his bed. But sleep didn’t come until long after the bells of St. Luke’s Church had tolled three, and then it was troubled by dreams of faces at the window and hands behind the curtains.
Chapter 10
Thomas woke at ten o’clock in a pool of sunshine and for a moment did not know where he was. There were no trees like there were outside his bedroom window at home in Flyte. Here the view was of the roofs of the neighboring houses and in the distance towers and high spires. Through the open window he could hear the endless noise of the passing traffic. London had been awake for hours.
After breakfast he went for a walk down to the river. The sidewalks were thronged with people, and he had to wait two or three minutes at the embankment before the traffic lights brought the stream of cars and trucks to a halt and he could cross over onto the Albert Bridge. It was just as pretty during the day, thought Thomas, even without the twinkling lights. There were golden portholes in its bright white sides and a canopy of curving metal girders overhead. Thomas stood in the center of the bridge, leaning over the parapet, and followed the line of golden sunlight glittering on the water that drew his eyes toward the east, toward Westminster and the Tower of London invisible beyond the next bend in the river. He felt suddenly excited by the great city stretching out all around him. The events of the night seemed as if they had taken place in another country. Children on bicycles were crossing the bridge on their way to Battersea Park, and it was hard to imagine being frightened in these sunlit crowded streets.