“We rigged a bulb to a car battery because she wouldn’t sleep in the dark,” Damon explained, waving a manicured hand at the room, which was bare but for an unfurled white futon, an Indian rug and a stack of dog-eared religious books. The box smelled of fresh paint and incense.
“You built it of wood,” said Edward, thumping the thin wall with his fist. “That makes no sense, Damon. A rat would be through this in a minute.”
“What else could we do? It made her feel safer, and that was all that counted. We wanted to take away her pain. Can you imagine what it was like to see someone in your own family suffer so much? Our father worshipped her.”
Edward detected an undercurrent of resentment in Damon’s voice. He and Gill had chosen not to marry. In the eyes of her brothers, it was a sin that prevented Edward from ever being treated as a member of the family. “You’re not telling me she disappeared from inside?” he asked. “How could she have got out?”
“That’s what we thought you might be able to explain to us,” snapped Matthew. “Why do you think we asked you here?”
“I don’t understand. You locked her in each night?”
“We did it for her own good.”
“How could it be good to lock a frightened woman inside a room?”
“She’d been getting panic attacks — growing confused, running into the street. Her aunt Alice has been sitting outside every night since this thing began. Anything Gillian’s needed she’s always been given.”
“When did she go missing?”
“The night before last. We thought she’d come back.”
“You didn’t see her leave? Edward asked the old lady.
“No,” replied Alice, daring him to defy her. “I was here all night.”
“And she didn’t pass you. Are you sure you never left your chair?”
“Not once. And I didn’t fall asleep, either. I don’t sleep at night with those things crawling all over the roof.”
“Did you let anyone else into the room?”
“Of course not, Alice said indignantly. “Only family and regular worshippers are allowed into the church. We don’t want other people in here.” Of course not, thought Edward. What’s the point of organized religion if you can’t exclude unbelievers?
“And no one except Gillian used the room,” Damon added. “That was the point. That was why we asked you to come.”
Edward studied the two brothers. He could just about understand Damon, squeaky clean and neatly groomed in a blazer and a pressed white shirt that provided him with an aura of faith made visible, but Matthew seemed in a state of perpetual anger, a church warrior who had no patience with the unconverted. He remained a mystery.
“Why me?” Edward asked. “What made you call me?”
Momentarily stumped, the brothers looked at each other awkwardly. “Well — you slept with her.” Presumably they thought he must know her better for having done so.
“I knew her until our son died, but then — well, when someone changes that much, it becomes impossible to understand how they think any more.” Edward hoped they would appreciate his point of view. He wanted to make contact with them just once. “Let me take a look around. I’ll see what I can do.”
The brothers stepped back, cognisant of their ineffectiveness, their hands awkwardly at their sides. Behind them, the church door opened and the congregation slowly streamed in. The men and women who arranged themselves at the rear of the church looked grey and beaten. Faith was all they had left.
“I’m sorry, it’s time for our evening service to begin,” Damon explained.
“Do what you have to do.” Edward accepted the red plastic torch that Matthew was offering him. “I’ll call you if I find anything.”
A series of narrow alleys ran beside the church. If Gill had managed to slip past the old lady, she would have had to enter them. Edward looked up at the dimming blue strip of evening sky. Along the gutters sat fat nests constructed of branches and bin bags, the black plastic shredded into malleable strips. As he watched, one bulged and disgorged a family of coal-eyed rats. They clung to the drainpipes, staring into his torch beam before suddenly spiralling down at him. He moved hastily aside as they scurried over his shoes and down the corridor of dirt-encrusted brick.
The end of the alley opened out into a small litter-strewn square. He hardly knew where to begin his search. If the family had failed to find her, how would he succeed? On the steps of a boarded-up block of flats sat an elderly man swathed in a dirty green sleeping bag. The man stared wildly at him, as if he had just awoken from a nightmare.
“All right?” asked Edward, nodding curtly. The old man beckoned him. Edward tried to stay beyond range of his pungent stale aroma, but was summoned nearer. “What is it?” he asked, wondering how anyone dared to sleep rough in the city now. The old man pulled back the top of his sleeping bag as if shyly revealing a treasure, and allowed him to look in on the hundred or so hairless baby rats that wriggled over his bare stomach like maggots, pink and blind.
Perhaps that was the only way you could survive the streets now, thought Edward, riven with disgust: you had to take their side. He wondered if, as a host for their offspring, the old man had been made an honorary member of their species, and was therefore allowed to continue unharmed. Although perhaps the truth was less fancifuclass="underline" rats sensed the safety of their surroundings through the movement of their own bodies. Their spatial perception was highly attuned to the width of drains, the cracks in walls, the fearful humans who moved away in great haste. Gill might have been panicked into flight, but she was weak and would not have been able to run for long. She must have stopped somewhere to regain her breath. But where?
He searched the dark square. The wind had risen to disturb the tops of the plane trees, replacing the city’s ever-present bass-line of traffic with natural susurration. It was the only sound he could now hear. Lights shone above a corner shop. Slumped on the windowsill, two Indian children stared down into the square, their eyes half-closed by rat bites.
Edward returned to the church, slipping in behind the ragged congregation, and watched Matthew in the dimly illuminated pulpit.
“For this is not the end but the beginning,” said Matthew, clearly preaching a worn-in sermon of fire and redemption. “Those whom the Lord has chosen to keep in good health will be free to remake the land in His way.” It was the kind of lecture to which Edward had been subjected as a child, unfocused in its promises, peppered with pompous rhetoric, vaguely threatening. “Each and every one of us must make a sacrifice, without which there can be no admittance to the Kingdom of Heaven, and he who has not surrendered his heart to Our Lady will be left outside, denied the power of reformation.”
It seemed to Edward that congregations always required the imposition of rules for their salvation, and desperate times had forced them to assume that these zealous brothers would be capable of setting them. He moved quietly to the unguarded door of the wooden box and stepped inside, shutting himself in.