I knew. And I was glad I’d bought my gun.
There were five doors leading off the hall. The flat was bigger than it looked from in the street. All the doors were closed.
Daddy threw open the first one on the left, reached in and switched on the light. It was the kitchen. It was spartanly neat and the appliances and utensils reflected like mirrors. It was empty.
Next door: Bathroom and toilet. Once again everything shone. Once again, it was empty.
End door: A bedroom, simply furnished with a single divan and a bedside table. The sweet smell was stronger there. The room was in darkness except for the light that entered from outside, between the undrawn curtains at the window that looked onto a bare brick wall opposite. Daddy stepped in and fumbled with the light switch. A dim bulb came on and I saw the door to a cupboard in the far wall. I pushed Daddy towards the divan and went over and yanked the cupboard door open. As I did so, the smell hit me like a muffled hammer. Human decay in its early to middling stages. Inside the cupboard, dressed in a puffa jacket and jeans was the body of Jimmy Himes. His face was bloodless, and his lips were drawn back over yellow teeth, but he was instantly recognizable from the photo I had shown Daddy. There was no visible sign of injury. Jimmy’s body was propped up against the back of the cupboard, whether by rigor, or because the collar of his jacket had been caught on a hook, I didn’t know, and didn’t stop to find out.
I looked at the fat man and he grimaced. ‘You fucker,’ I said.
‘There’s no need to get personal,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.’
‘No arrangement,’ I said, and drew the Colt from my pocket and pointed it at him.
‘And you won’t need that either.’
‘We’ll see. Where’s your phone?’
‘In the living room,’ he said. ‘The door opposite the kitchen.’
I backed out of the room, gestured with the revolver, and he followed me. ‘Why have you kept him here?’ I asked as we went.
‘I like him. He doesn’t talk back.’
I could have shot the bastard there and then for saying that. I should have. It was all going too easily. I walked backwards into the hallway, Daddy following me all the while, and when he reached the doorway, he looked over my shoulder along the length of the hall and said. ‘Sonny. Deal with him.’
‘Not that old one,’ I said. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’ And then I felt a slight displacement of air by my ear, before the doorway and Daddy exploded in a galaxy of white lights, and I tumbled down into a deep well of blackness where there was no light at all.
I came to for a moment as I was picked up by a pair of strong arms and carried back into the bedroom. I opened my eyes and saw that I was being held by a massive lump of meat in a pale blue, hooded sweatshirt. It had to be Sonny. ‘Yesterday my life was full of rain.’ I was so out of it, that I started to hum the tune, and he crashed my head against the door frame as we went, and the black hole opened again and I dropped into its embrace for a second time.
I came to once more lying on the divan bed with my arms and legs tied tightly and some kind of tape over my mouth. I was on my side, my hands were behind my back, and both they and my feet were numb and cramped, they were bound so tightly. The light had been switched off and the room was dark except for the reflected glow coming through my window, and someone was bending over me. For a second I didn’t know where the hell I was, until I was pulled roughly onto my back and I looked up into Rick’s face.
Then I remembered.
‘And you were going to make sure everything was all right,’ he whispered. ‘You’re fucking useless.’ He ripped the tape from my mouth, taking a few square centimetres of skin with it.
‘How did you get here?’ I said through dry lips, in a voice that I didn’t recognize as my own.
‘Up the fire escape and through the window. I thought you’d run out on me.’
I shook my head and nearly passed out again.
‘Did you find Jimmy?’ he asked.
I almost nodded, then thought better of it. ‘Yes, I did’.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s dead. Murdered. In the cupboard over there.’
‘What?’ Rick looked at the cupboard door. ‘Christ. I wondered what that stink was.’
‘Can you unite me?’ I said. ‘We can talk about it later.’
‘Better than that,’ said Rick, and he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a flick-knife. He touched the button on the handle and a six-inch blade popped out, reflecting the dim light in the room.
As he slashed at the cords that bound my wrists we both heard movement in the hall outside the room.
‘Quick. It’s one of them,’ I said, urgently trying to rub some life back into my hands. ‘And they’ve got my gun.’
Rick stood up and went towards the door. ‘My legs,’ I said desperately, but before he could cut those ropes too, we both heard the movement get louder as someone approached the room. Rick ran across the carpet, opened the cupboard where Jimmy’s body was hidden, slid in, and pulled the door closed behind him. I lay on the bed, put my arms behind me as if they were still tied and squinted at the door through half closed eyes. It began to open and a shaft of light from the hall crept across the carpet before it was obscured by Daddy’s huge bulk. He stood in the doorway, the light behind him, my gun in his hand. I hoped he’d come close enough so’s I could grab him because my feet were useless, my hands weren’t much better, and I knew I’d only get one chance.
He entered the room slowly and I wondered what was on his mind, when there was a noise from the cupboard and I knew the game was up. Daddy switched on the light, looked at me, then turned in the direction of the cupboard door and raised the gun he was holding. The look on his face was half puzzlement, half fear. Slowly the cupboard door began to swing open and Daddy’s eyes widened in astonishment. I knew that with my legs tied the way they were I couldn’t reach him before he could shoot me, and I knew that Rick and I were done for.
The door opened further. Daddy was frozen to the spot and Jimmy’s body appeared in the opening.
Daddy screamed and fired twice at Jimmy. Rick who was holding the corpse as a shield let it drop and ran across the carpet, open flick knife in his hand, and his arm outstretched. Daddy stepped back and Rick plunged the blade upwards into his throat, and blood spouted like a fountain over his gun hand. Daddy fired once more, point blank into Rick’s stomach and the heavy bullet smeared a chunk of his back across the floor.
The fat man fell to his knees like a tower block being demolished, and with much the same racket, one hand clawing at the knife that protruded from his quadruple chins. I threw myself off the bed and crashed to the floor, cursing my useless legs, pulled myself up, using his fat as handholds, tore at the gun he was still clutching, and hitting at his face and neck with the side of my clenched left fist, hammered the knife further into his flesh. The Colt was sticky with both Rick’s and his blood, but I managed to tear it out of his grasp as the door at the far end of the hall opened and Sonny appeared, and ran towards us. I fell flat on the floor and fired upwards, emptying the gun into Sonny’s torso as he came. The pale blue of his shirt blossomed red, and he stumbled and fell, and his body slid along the carpet until his head rested in the doorway just a few feet from where I was lying. He opened his mouth and breathed his last with a rattle, and a gout of hot blood.