Was it MacNeil who interrupted them? Was Flight’s killer still in the house when he came in? He supposed it was possible that while he was in the studio the killer had slipped down the stairs and made his escape. Silent, unseen. Like a ghost. A ghost that was haunting MacNeil wherever he went, killing everyone with whom he had contact: the kids on the housing estate in South Lambeth, Kazinski, and now Flight. He looked at the sculptor, head slumped on his chest, and thought that he was no loss to the world. He knew he would have to call this one in. But he didn’t want to be involved. An anonymous tip-off from Flight’s own phone would bring the local police, although maybe not until the curfew was over. What they found here would be largely self-explanatory.
MacNeil stood up and crossed to the sideboard. He went through all the drawers, careful not to disturb anything that might prove useful to the cops when they came. He found old flyers for exhibitions of Flight’s work, sketches and scribbled notes, a well-thumbed pack of Tarot cards, pens and pencils, receipts, some loose change. There was little else in the room that could be described as personal. MacNeil wondered where Flight kept the accumulated detritus of his own life. Or perhaps, since it was other people’s lives he collected, preserving them in pieces for posterity, he kept little or nothing of his own.
In the bedroom, next to his bed, MacNeil found the only piece of furniture in the apartment that didn’t look like it had been chosen from a Scandinavian mail-order catalogue. It was an antique roll-top bureau, a family piece, perhaps, from another life. MacNeil rolled back the top and found a mess of paperwork and accounts. Bills, receipts, invoices, an accounting notebook full of Flight’s tiny, neurotic scribbles. A brass holder was stuffed full of letters, still in their envelopes. A few pieces of private correspondence, but mostly paid and unpaid bills.
Finally MacNeil found gold. In a shallow drawer at the back of the bureau, nestling in green felt, was Flight’s address book. It was full to overflowing with business cards and addresses scribbled on folded scraps of paper. But here was the definitive collection of all Flight’s friends and acquaintances, from both his private and business lives, although MacNeil imagined that the dividing line between the two was probably pretty blurred.
Carefully, he started leafing through the alphabet. But there were so many names, and with no idea of what he was looking for, MacNeil quickly gave up and flicked through to K, where he found Kazinski’s telephone number. But no address. It would have been superfluous, a place Flight would never have gone, even in his worst nightmares.
He was about to thumb through the remaining pages, when MacNeil spotted a small square of paper, folded twice, and wedged in the spine. So he left the book open at K, pressed the spine flat and delicately retrieved the small scrap of paper. He unfolded it. There was a name scrawled on it, perhaps a nickname of some kind. Pinkie. And beneath it a telephone number. MacNeil could tell from the code that it was a mobile. Beneath the number was an address, but a line drawn across the paper seemed to separate the two, and MacNeil got the impression that they didn’t necessarily go together. Although it was possible that they were related in some way. And then he went very still. And in his head he heard Kazinski say, I don’t know the address. It was a big house. You know, some rich geezer’s place. It was somewhere near Wandsworth Common. Root Street, Ruth Street, something like that. MacNeil’s eyes were fixed on the piece of paper in his hand. The address was in Routh Road, Wandsworth.
MacNeil sat on the edge of the bed and held the paper between slightly trembling fingers, looking at the name and number and address until they blurred. He was hungry, and tired, and very possibly in shock. It was hard to concentrate. And then he had a thought. He reached for the telephone on the bedside and dialled the number on the piece of paper.
Pinkie sat in his car fifty yards away watching the lights burning in the windows of Flight’s apartment. He wondered what MacNeil was doing in there, what delights he had discovered, what secrets uncovered. He had been so preoccupied with Flight’s little house of horrors on the first floor that it had been a simple enough matter for Pinkie to creep silently down to the front door and out into the night. He tried to imagine MacNeil’s surprise when he went upstairs and found Flight waiting for him. Pinkie had been unable to resist the temptation to arrange the sculptor in welcoming pose on his expensive leather chair. If MacNeil had come straight up, well then, he’d simply have had to shoot him. Even at the risk of Mr Smith’s ire. Irritatingly, Flight’s head had refused to play ball and kept falling forward, and Pinkie had felt compelled finally, for reasons of self-preservation, to leave before he was satisfied.
His mobile phone purred on the seat beside him. He picked it up and looked at the display. Jonathan Flight, it said, and he dropped it again, as if it were contaminated. It couldn’t be Flight. He’d just killed him. He felt goosebumps rise up all across his neck and shoulders, before forcing himself to think logically. It couldn’t be Flight. But it was someone calling from Flight’s phone. So it had to be MacNeil. Where in the name of God had he got the number? Flight must have kept it in an address book, or in the memory of his phone. But how would MacNeil know to call it? Pinkie was spooked.
Tentatively he picked up the phone and pressed the green button to take the call. He put it to his ear and listened and said nothing. ‘Hello?’ he heard MacNeil’s voice. ‘Hello?’ But still Pinkie said nothing. And then he grinned. Now it was MacNeil’s turn to be spooked.
MacNeil listened to the ambient silence. He could hear someone breathing, someone listening but saying nothing, almost as if they knew who was calling. He wanted to hang up, to cut off the presence that was so eloquent in its silence. But there was something compelling in it, and he sat for a full minute saying nothing. Just listening. He felt evil in the silence, and the longer he listened to it the more oppressive it became, until finally he couldn’t stand it any more, and he banged the receiver back in its cradle. He was shaking now, his mouth dry. He had the unnerving feeling that he had just had an encounter with the ghost that was haunting him, this killer of men and boys, and perhaps of a little Chinese girl with a cleft palate. And he had, too, the sense that this ghost was somewhere very close.
‘Scotland the Brave’ burst into jolly refrain, and MacNeil’s heart nearly hit the roof of his mouth. He fumbled in his pocket for his mobile and saw Amy’s name on the display.
‘Hey, Amy,’ he said, trying to sound as natural as he could.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You sound weird.’
‘I’m just tired, Amy.’ He looked at his watch. It was after midnight. ‘You should be in bed.’
‘I can’t sleep. I wish I’d never brought the head home with me. It’s like she’s here in the house, that little girl. Haunting me. I can’t get her face out of my mind.’
Someone else, MacNeil thought, being haunted tonight.
‘How is it going?’
He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth. Someday, maybe, but not tonight. ‘I’ve got a couple of leads,’ he said. ‘I think she might have been murdered in a house near Wandsworth Common.’
‘My God, that’s more than a couple of leads. How did you get to that?’
‘Too complicated to go into now. How about you? Anything fresh? Any feedback from the lab?’
‘Actually, yes. Pretty strange, really, and I’ve no idea if it’s important or not. But she had the flu.’