‘We haven’t got time to-’
‘I said listen! I want you to go into the kitchen. There are rags under the sink. Bring me as many as you can find – and get towels from the bathroom too, anything you can get hold of.’ He was struggling to get up. From inside the wardrobe a pool of something viscid, matted with hair, had crept a short way across the floor and congealed. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. ‘Then get my holdall from the peg, and my suitcase – is it still outside the door?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bring me everything from the suitcase and then I want you to switch off the lights and leave the house. I’ll take care of the rest.’
‘Switch off the lights?’
‘This isn’t a fucking freak show. I don’t need you staring at me.’
My God, I thought, clambering back over the desk into the corridor, what has she done to you? Is it what she did to Bison? He died. Bison died from what she did. The shutters were all open and in the garden the snow was still falling, huge fat grey flakes the size of hands, circling and batting into one another, their shadows skittering across the floor. The carrier-bag in the tree sent a long, lantern-like shape on to the wall. I couldn’t remember the house ever being so cold – it was as if the air had frozen in blocks. In the kitchen I grabbed an armful of rags, then some towels from the bathroom. I climbed shakily back over the desk.
‘Put them near the wardrobe. I said don’t look at me! ’
‘And I said don’t shout.’ I clambered back into the hallway, pulled his suitcase to the door, lifted it over the desk and pushed it down on to the floor. Then I went to the row of pegs at the top of the stairs to get his holdall from where it hung under the coats. As I pulled aside the coats and jackets I kept my ears trained on the alley, all the time imagining the Nurse silently sidewinding down the streets towards us, standing outside the house looking up at the windows and trying to decide how she would-
I came to a halt.
Jason’s holdall.
I stood absolutely still, staring at it, only my ribs rising and falling under the coat. An odd idea was whorling through me. The house was silent, only the click click click of the floorboards contracting in the cold and the muffled sound of Jason shuffling around in the wardrobe. He had been carrying that holdall the night of Fuyuki’s party. Slowly, dazedly, I looked along the silent corridor stretching into darkness, then I turned stiffly and stared at his door. Jason? I thought, the blood in my veins like ice. Jason?
I placed my hands on the holdall, looking at it thoughtfully. Listen, he’d said, when he’d come to my room after the party. He’d been holding this bag. I remembered it all clearly. We’ve both got exactly what the other needs. I’m going to tell you something you’re really going to love. Suddenly I wasn’t imagining the Nurse lingering outside in the alley – instead I was imagining her hurrying past a black pool with the sky reflected in it, a red emergency light flashing on and off above her head. Last night I hadn’t seen Jason reappear with the Nurse when Fuyuki was choking. There had been a few minutes, just a few, when in the confusion anything could have happened…
Gingerly, moving slowly, painful inch by painful inch, I unzipped the bag and put my fingers inside. I could feel tissues and cigarette cartons and a pair of socks. I pushed my hands in deeper. A set of keys and a cigarette lighter. And in the corner of the bag something furred. I stopped. It was something furred and cold, and the size of a rat. I became very still, the skin on the back of my neck twitching. Jason? What’s this? I brushed my fingers over it, felt the fibrous tug of old dead animal skin, and a memory came to me. I took a breath and pulled the object out and stared at it in dumb surprise. It was a model of a bear – about five inches tall. There was a long red and gold braided string tied to a ring in its nose, and the moment I saw it I knew it was Irina’s lost fighting bear. He a strange one, that one, I remembered her muttering one day so long ago. He watch the bad video and he thief too. You know that? Stole my bear, my glove, even stole picture of my grandmama, my grandpapa…
‘Hey!’ Jason called suddenly. ‘What the fuck’s going on out there?’
I didn’t answer. Moving woodenly, I took the holdall off the peg and went back to his room. I stopped outside the door, and stared at the suitcase lying on the floor. I was thinking of him weeks ago, throwing his hand into my face, mimicking Shi Chongming’s exploding dragon. He’d known I was looking for something. But – I had no idea how perfect you were, not until tonight…
Of course, Jason, I thought, my knees weak. Of course. If you found Fuyuki’s medicine it would be exactly the sort of thing you’d like… You’re a thief, aren’t you? Someone who’d steal for nothing but the thrill.
The suitcase wasn’t closed properly – his belongings were hanging out of it, a pair of trainers, jeans, a belt. ‘Yes,’ I said, under my breath, as things began to fit into place. ‘Yes – I see.’ All the questions and answers were knitting dreamily together. Something else had been nagging at me since that morning, something about all the other objects that had been strewn around the corridor: a camera, paperwork, some photos. His passport. His passport?
‘Jason,’ I murmured, ‘why were all those – those things…’ I lifted my hand, pointing vaguely at the suitcase. ‘Those-You were packing last night, weren’t you? Packing. Why would you have been packing if you hadn’t known -’
‘What the fuck’re you talking about?’
‘- if you hadn’t known… that she might come?’
‘Just put everything on the floor and go.’
‘That’s it, isn’t it? You realized what you’d done. You suddenly realized how serious it was, that she might come because you’d stolen-’
‘I said put everything-’
‘Because you’d stolen,’ I raised my voice. ‘You’d stolen from Fuyuki. You had. Hadn’t you?’
I could almost hear his indecision, his lips moving silently, muttering his fury. For a moment I thought he was going to leap out at me, full of aggression. But he didn’t. Instead he said irritably, ‘So? Don’t start lecturing me. I’m choking with it, believe me. Choking with you and all your weird fucking issues and obsessions.’
I dropped the holdall and put my hands to my head. ‘You…’ I had to breathe in and out very quickly. I was shaking all over. ‘You – you… Why? Why did you…’
‘ Because! ’ he said, exasperated. ‘Just because. Because it was there. Suddenly this fucking thing you’d been…’ He caught his breath. ‘It was there. Right in front of my eyes and, believe me, I had no idea of the fucking hell-fire that was going to rain down on my head if I took it, and now is not the time to be giving me judgement, so just put the stuff on the fucking floor and-’
‘Oh, Jason,’ I said dazedly, ‘what is it?’
‘You really don’t want to know. Now put the-’
‘Please, please, tell me what it is, where you’ve hidden it.’ I turned and looked up the empty corridor, stretching into the darkness. ‘Please, it’s so important to me. Where is it?’
‘Put the holdall on the floor-’
‘Where is it?’
‘And move the towels nearer the wardrobe.’
‘ Jason, where is it?’
‘I said move the towels to the wardrobe and-’
‘Tell me now or I’ll-’
‘ Shut up! ’ He hammered on the doors, making them bounce in the runners. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck your shitsucking little treasure hunt. If you’re not going to help me then either fight me – because I will fight you, I’m not afraid to hit you – or go and screw yourself.’
I stood for a moment, looking at the wardrobe door, my heart racing. Then I turned and stared back down the corridor. Most of the doors were closed. It was still littered with broken glass and fabric from the walls. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’ I put out my hands blindly in front of me, moving the fingers, as if the air texture would hold the answer. ‘I’m going to find it. I don’t need you. You brought it back last night and it’s still here somewhere.’