I looked at her hard. ‘I killed him,’ I said. My mouth filled with something metallic from the air. I’d had a lifetime to absorb, reconstitute, reinvent whatever had happened to me. The pain had turned my cells inside out, but I’d adapted over time. Rory, though, was too old when he found out, too brittle, for the onslaught of pain. And above all, I’d known it.
If I could have stopped him, or spoken to him in the moments before he jumped, I might have told him that. I might have told him how proud he’d be of himself if he could see himself as I’d done.
‘He’s – he doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ Grace said quickly, turning me around and leading me back towards her car. She clicked along on her heels, pulling me, glancing occasionally into the sky. The threatening rain would ruin her hair.
It is only when Amit taps me on the shoulder that I realise that I have been crying. I look up and wipe my face with the back of a hand. His breath comes out misty in the cold air.
‘Amit?’ I say.
He sits next to me for a moment but his legs dance so much that he has to stand up. ‘Listen,’ he says, then thinks better of it whatever it might have been. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Really.’
‘Okay,’ he says, weighing up whether to say what is on his mind. ‘That woman.’
‘Yes?’ I say, wondering whether he might have carried on searching after I left.
‘You know that Farm Street is just around the corner. I saw it on Maps.’
‘Yes. I know it is.’
‘Well, if she lives there, can’t you just knock on the door?’
I consider what he has said and try to assemble into some order what I can say to him in reply. I don’t want to alarm him unnecessarily.
‘She doesn’t live there exactly. That’s where she went missing from.’
‘I don’t get it. So, did she live there and now she’s gone?’ he says confused.
‘Kind of.’
‘Does anyone live there now?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Can’t you speak to them? Or have you already?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think he’s the reason she’s missing,’ I say, and then realise what I have said too late.
‘Shit. Do you think he killed her?’
I say nothing but have an urge to confide in him, this boy, who won’t find it hard to believe me.
‘Yes,’ I say at last.
He looks at me wide-eyed. ‘Shit. That’s dark.’
‘Yes,’ I say, and then I tell him what happened, in desperation, glad to have someone to share it.
He stares at me the whole time as if he cannot believe his luck at being included in my confidence. I have to keep reminding myself that he is still a child but I can’t help seeing him as I see Rory at that age. Fully grown. Almost.
As soon as I have finished telling him, the remorse sets in.
‘Amit,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I’m sorry. I should not be telling you this. Look, I am obviously just a crazy homeless guy. You know that, right? Just forget it all.’
‘So, she could still be there? It’s not even a week ago,’ he says, bouncing a little on his heels.
‘This was a mistake.’ I get up and begin to walk down the road.
‘No, wait. We should go round there.’
‘Really, should we?’ I say. ‘Does that sound like something we should do?’ The tone in my voice isn’t one I recognise. I’ve never liked sarcasm.
‘Yes. We should. If she’s dead we could definitely find out whether she’s still there.’
‘How?’ I say, stopping.
‘The smell,’ he says. ‘Six days rotting – we did this in biology. That place will be stinking.’ He scrunches his nose.
‘She’s not in there. I think some men came by and took the body.’
‘Then at least let’s see if we can find her name out,’ he says.
‘How?’ I say. ‘I can’t go anywhere near the place.’
‘Trust me,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it. You wouldn’t even have to be there.’
‘No. It’s too dangerous,’ I say, and hold him by the shoulders to underline the point.
He turns on his heel and faces the other way. ‘I’m going anyway,’ he says. ‘42B, isn’t it?’
Before I can answer, he has jogged away.
When I catch up with him he is already on Farm Street, scanning the doors for numbers. I reach him just as he is about to walk through the gate to the main house.
‘Amit, no,’ I say to him in a heavy whisper. The darkness bathing the house disguises his expression so I don’t know how he has reacted.
‘Okay,’ he says at last, and follows me back to the pavement.
‘Xander?’ he says after a moment.
‘Yes?’
‘If I were you …’
‘If you were me what?’
‘I’d hide.’ Before I can stop him he has run back to the house and has pointed a finger at the bell. He turns towards me in the darkness and waves me away with his other hand. Then before I can react, he presses.
I have time only to notice that there is a second new lock on the door. A legacy from hearing about my second attempted visit from the police, no doubt. Amit has now turned to the door, and panic grips me as I scramble for a place to hide. I hurry across the road and find a car I can crouch behind. I reach it and quickly duck out of view. My heart is racing. I peek my head up over the bonnet and make out Amit still waiting at the door. I hope nobody is in.
My heart counts the seconds as they thud by. With each passing one, I begin to relax. Ebadi must be out. Then I see a crack of light outline the doorway, growing until it has turned Amit into silhouette.
I cannot make out at this distance what is being said, but Amit is gesticulating with his hands to a figure in the doorway. It must be Ebadi. After a minute Amit seems to turn to go but is stopped by something Ebadi has said. Ebadi steps back into the house and just as I think that the door is going to shut safely between them, Amit follows him inside.
26
Monday
As I wait here in the growing darkness, panic begins to overtake me. Amit has just walked into the house of a murderer and I let him. I don’t even know what he’d planned to say to him. If he went over there and started talking about a dead woman or a missing woman, what was Ebadi likely to do?
I cannot sit here, hiding behind a car, and let him come to harm. Not this time around.
I get up from my position and march towards the house but an unformulated thought stops me. My brain begins to click and shift through the gears and once it has, I stop and turn back. I can’t break the door down. So, then I have to ring the bell. What if he refuses to open the door? What if he opens the door and refuses to let me past? Calls the police? What if, having heard the doorbell and seeing me, he panics and does something to Amit? I can hardly call the police. They wouldn’t come after all the fuss I have created and laid at his door. Or if they did they would arrest me. My heart begins to pump and suddenly I feel light-headed. I don’t feel in control of events and I know now why I have laboured so hard to avoid having to care for another person. My life on the streets doesn’t allow any room for that. I have tried so hard to stay alone and yet here I am.
The safest thing is to wait. He has no reason to kill a boy. An identifiable boy, with long hair, in a school uniform. A boy who would be missed, by hundreds of people. An image of Amit comes into my mind. In it he is being strangled. I shake my head to rattle the picture free. It disappears.
But there are others waiting to take its place. I try to think of something else. Someone else. Rory. Grace. Seb. I screw my eyes shut and see Amit in a box, being buried.