“Isn’t it time for your tea yet?” Croft says.
“I’m scared of tigers,” the boy says. “If they come on the TV, I have to switch off.”
That night, Croft dreams of Richard Symes. There has been a break-in at Symes’s house and there are cops everywhere. They’re trying to work out if any valuables have been stolen.
Symes’s throat has been cut.
There is no sign of Ashley Symes, or anyone else.
At his next meeting with Symes, Croft is able to tell him he’s been offered the shelf-stacking job. Symes seems pleased.
“When do you start?” he says.
“Next Monday.” He wonders if Symes will say anything to him about a burglary at his home, but he doesn’t. Instead, Symes asks him how he’s getting on with his new camera.
“It’s great to use,” Croft says. “The best I’ve had.”
“Why don’t you bring some of your work with you to show us when you come on Tuesday? I know Ashley would love that. Bring the boy with you, too, if you like.”
How does Symes know about Alex? For a moment, Croft feels panic begin to rise up inside him. Then he remembers Symes knows the Mc-Nieces, that it was Symes who found him his room. “I couldn’t,” Croft says. “He’s only eight. His mother wouldn’t allow it.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It would be an adventure for him. All boys love adventures.”
Croft says he’ll think about it. He thinks about himself and Alex, walking down the road like father and son. On his way back to London Bridge station, Croft buys Alex a present from one of the gift shops jammed in under the railway arches near Borough Market, a brightly coloured clockwork tiger with a large, looped key in its side. It is made of tin plate, MADE IN CHINA.
The journey from London Bridge to Lee takes seventeen minutes. As he mounts the stairs to his room, he meets Sandra coming down.
“I’ve just been trying to find you,” she says. “I found this. Alex said you were looking for it.”
She holds something out to him, and Croft sees it is a key. “It’s for that cupboard in the chimney alcove,” she says. “We’ve not opened it since we’ve been here, so God knows what’s in there. Just chuck out anything you don’t need.”
“That’s very good of you,” Croft says. He searches her face, for tiredness or bruises, anything he can hate McNiece with, but today he finds nothing. He thinks about asking her to come up for a coffee but is worried that his offer might be misconstrued. He closes his fingers around the key. Its hard, irregular shape forms a core of iron at the heart of his hand.
It is some time before he opens the cupboard. He tells himself this is because he has things to do, but in reality it is because he is afraid of what he might find inside. Late afternoon shadows pour out of the oval mirror and rush to hide themselves in the corners and beneath the bed. As the room begins to fill up with darkness, Croft finds he can already imagine the stuffed tiger’s head, the mummified, shrunken body of a child, the jam jar full of flies or human teeth. When he finally opens the cupboard it is empty. The inside smells faintly sour, an aroma Croft quickly recognises as very old wallpaper paste. The wallpaper inside the cupboard is a faded green colour. It is peeling away from the walls, and in one place right at the back it has fallen down completely. The wooden panel behind is cracked, and when Croft puts his fingers over the gap he can feel a faint susurrus of air, a thin breeze, trapped between the wooden back of the cupboard and the interior brickwork.
Croft puts his whole head inside the cupboard and presses his opened mouth to the draughty hole. He tastes brick dust, cool air, the smell of damp earth and old pennies.
He closes his eyes and then breathes in. The cold, metallic air tastes delicious and somehow rare, like the air inside a cave. He exhales, pushing his own air back through the gap, and it is if he and the building are breathing together, slowly in and out. It is then that he feels the thing pass into him, something old that has been waiting in the building’s foundations, in the ancient sewer tunnels beneath the street, or somewhere deeper down even than that. Its face is a hideous ruin, and as Croft takes it into himself, he is at last granted the knowledge he has been fumbling for, the truth of who he is and what he has done.
Strange lights flicker across the backs of his closed eyelids, yellow stripes, like the markings on the metal tiger he bought for the boy near Borough Market.
You are ready now, says a voice inside his head. Croft realises it is the voice of Ashley Symes.
And in the end, it is easy. Both McNieces are downstairs, working the bar. Alex is alone in the living room of the first floor flat. The carpet is a battleground, strewn with Transformers toys and model soldiers. The tin-plate tiger is surrounded by aggressive forces. The TV is playing quietly in the background.
When Croft sticks his head around the door and asks if Alex would like to come on an assignment with him, the boy says yes at once. The boy knows the word assignment has to do with photography because Croft has told him so.
“Where are we going?” Alex says. It is getting on towards his bedtime, but the unexpectedness of what they are doing has filled him with energy.
Croft knows that unless he is very unlucky, the boy’s absence will not be noticed for at least three hours.
“To visit some people I know,” Croft says. “They keep a tiger in their back garden.”
The boy’s eyes grow large.
“You’re joking me,” he says.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
The boy laughs delightedly, and Croft takes his hand. The journey passes uneventfully. The boy seems captivated by every small thing — the pale mist rising up from the streets, the lit-up shop fronts, the endlessly streaming car headlights, yellow as cats’ eyes.
The only glances they encounter seem benign.
When they arrive at Symes’s house, Alex rushes up the driveway to the front door and rings the bell.
“And who is this young man?” Symes says, bending down.
“Dennis says you’ve got a tiger, but I don’t believe him,” says the child. He is beginning to flag now, Croft senses, just a little. He is overexcited. The slightest thing could have him in tears.
“We’ll have to have a look, then, won’t we?” Symes says. He places a hand on the boy’s head. Croft steps forward out of the shadows and towards the door.
Once he is inside, he knows, it will begin. He and Ashley Symes will kill the child. The rest will watch.
“You have done well,” Symes says to Croft, quietly. “This won’t take long.”
“Will there be cookies?” Alex says.
Croft stands still. He can feel the thing moving inside him, twisting in his guts like a cancer.
He wants to vomit. Croft gasps for breath, sucking in the blunt, smoky air, the scent of macadam, of the hushed, damp trees at the roadsides and spreading along all the railway lines of southeast London. The fleet rails humming with life, an antidote to ruin.
He smells the timeswept, irredeemable city and it is like waking up.
Above him, bright stars throw up their hands in surprise.
“Come here to me, Sasha,” Croft says. He is amazed at how steady his voice sounds. “There’s no time now. We have to go.”
“But the tiger,” the child whimpers. He looks relieved.
“There are no tigers here,” Croft says. “Mr. Symes was joking. Come on.”
The boy’s hand is once again in his and he grips it tightly.