The fronts of the houses had been boarded up with sheets of de-laminating plywood, and although we walked quickly down the row with the torch, none of them looked to have been recently disturbed.
“We’ll try the back,” Sean said. “We’ll be here all night if we have to fight our way into every one from this side.”
The rear of the houses could be reached down what had once been an alleyway, with cobbles underfoot, and a gully drain down the centre. The mirror-image row that would have backed onto it was no more than a disconnected pile of stones.
The gates leading to the tiny back yards had mostly disintegrated, or were dangling by the rusted remnants of their hinges. One dislodged completely and clattered to the floor as we brushed past.
The back doors had been made of sterner stuff than the gates, but they’d been kicked in instead. Inside, the houses were very dark and reeked with a pungent blend of old urine like a neglected public lavatory. The beam of the torch picked out empty two-litre bottles of cheap cider, scrunched-up crisp packets, and blackened shards of silver foil. I didn’t see the needles, but I tried to curb Friday’s explorations with a hand slipped through his collar, just in case.
The Ridgeback didn’t show any signs of involvement until the fourth house along. As we stepped through the doorway he suddenly went rigid, and jerked forwards out of my grasp.
He shot through the kitchen. We followed at a slightly slower pace, trying not to break our necks in the gloom by tripping over rotting furniture too shabby even for the house clearance gannets to cart away.
In the living room we found Friday scrabbling at the base of a mattress that was leaning up against the wall by the stairs.
I clicked my fingers and the dog reluctantly pulled back. Between the three of us we dragged the mattress into the centre of the room and dropped it onto the boards, raising musty clouds of dust that spiralled and spun in the beam of the torch.
Behind it, the door leading to the cellar had been secured with a shiny new galvanised bolt and padlock.
Sean gave the door an experimental nudge, but the house dated from the 1890s’, back when they built them strong. I tapped him on the arm and handed him my Swiss Army knife. The Philips screwdriver attachment was already unfolded.
“You always were the prepared one, Charlie,” he said with a grin that I heard in his voice rather than saw. “I think you must have been a Boy Scout in a previous life.”
“Didn’t you know?” I said, laconic. “I’m a member of the Anti-Woggle League.”
Madeleine shone the Maglite onto the door. It didn’t take Sean long to undo the two screws which held the catch onto the outer frame. The door swung outwards with the bolt and padlock still attached, without us having to bother forcing them. Sean gave me back the knife and took the torch from Madeleine.
Its narrow beam revealed a small dank stairwell that seemed to disappear much further than it should do in order to descend just one level into the cellar.
Something brown and furred scuttled across one of the lower treads and paused to stare red-eyed up into the flashlight, unconcerned. It was the size of a small rabbit, igniting a dread I hadn’t experienced since childhood. Friday growled deep in his throat, and Madeleine groaned.
“You stay here,” Sean told her. “I don’t like the idea of all of us being down there, anyway, just in case.”
She nodded gratefully, and I was forced to swallow my own fear, starting nervously down the stairs as though I was expecting the damned thing to leap out at me at any moment. All the hairs on my arms had stood bolt upright like I’d had a static charge.
“Are you OK?” Sean asked.
I forced a smile, managed through gritted teeth, “If there’s once thing I can’t stand, it’s fucking rats.”
Sean glanced at me, and when he spoke his voice was dry as the desert. “So don’t fuck them,” he said.
Friday wasn’t in the mood to miss out on the action, particularly with the prospect of an interesting snack in the offing. He was destined to be disappointed. The rat scarpered as soon as he put his first foot on the stairs, disappearing into a hole in the stonework from which it failed to re-emerge.
Sean edged downwards with more circumspection, holding the torch at shoulder height, just behind the bulb so he could use the other end as a club. Once we reached the rough floor we both stood silent for a few moments, scanning the corners of the cramped room.
The cellar was little more than ten feet square, the walls covered with crumbling plaster which had slipped to reveal large areas of mouldy stone underneath.
Sean cast about with the light, but the search pattern revealed the cellar to be almost empty, apart from the junk. Piled against the far wall were great stacks of mildewed newspapers, wilted slabs of cardboard, and rags, all mixed up together. It smelt of corruption, and festering decay.
For a minute we thought it was a false alarm, and I felt the sharp, sour tang of disappointment. Then Friday gave up inspecting the hole where the rat had made its exit, and came over to give us the benefit of his sensitive nostrils.
He padded casually across the uneven cobbles and thrust his face straight into the dross until he was buried up to the ears, like he’d put his head under water.
The result sent us both reeling back in shocked amazement.
The pile of rubbish exploded upwards and outwards with a wailing cry. A small, stinking apparition launched itself from the dregs and lunged for the gap between us and the freedom of the stairs.
Twenty-seven
For a moment I was totally stunned, made too stupid by it to act, but Sean snagged his foot under a shin as it rushed past him, sending the figure sprawling.
“For fuck’s sake, boy,” Sean roared, shining the torch on him. “Just for once in your life will you stop running away from me?”
Roger had been scrabbling away on his hands and knees and it took him a couple of seconds to register the sound of his brother’s voice. His desperation subsided, but the wariness didn’t leave him.
“We’re not with O’Bryan in this, Roger,” I said quickly, moving forwards. “We’ve never been with him.”
Roger recognised me and suddenly it was like something cracked open inside him. The tears overflowed to drip down his cheeks, leaving clear tracks through the dirt.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said, desperate, anguished. “We had to. He made us.”
“We know, kid,” Sean knelt by the side of him, put his arms round the boy’s shoulders and hugged him fiercely. “We know all about O’Bryan.”
“He said, if we didn’t k-kill Charlie, he’d make sure Ursula went to p-prison,” Roger went on, the words spilling out of him in gulps, even though his face was buried in Sean’s chest, and his voice was muffled. I had to bend closer to hear what he was saying.
“He said they’d give her a rough time inside. He said—” he broke off as a fresh breaker of tears rolled over and smashed, “that he’d make sure she l-lost the baby.”
His thin shoulders shook as he wept for what seemed like a long time. Sean had let the end of the torch dip, so that the beam hit the cellar wall, but in the light reflected back I could see the sorrow in his face, and the anger.
I touched his shoulder, feeling like an unwelcome intruder into their grief.
“We need to move,” I said.
He was still for a moment, then he nodded, gently levering Roger back so he could look into his face.
“Are you ready to get out of here, kid?”
The boy nodded mutely, the fight gone out of him. I led the way up the cellar steps to find that Madeleine was using her Zippo to light the stubs of some old candles she’d found. She gave Roger a big smile, and a hug too, which was pretty brave of her considering how rancid he smelt.