He stopped outside a kebab shop, drawn by the scents of sweet garlic and coriander. The yellow glow from the lighted window spilled out across the grubby pavement in a radiant trapezium, a distorted yellow shadow of the window glass. There were three men up at the counter. They all had their backs to him but one of them seemed vaguely familiar, and as Kip studied his worn-out jacket and tatty Levis he realized with a sudden start that it was Dennis Croft. His gut twisted in a mild spasm, and sweat broke out on his palms.
Distantly, as if it were something he was watching on a movie screen, he saw Croft turn towards the window and beckon him inside.
“Can I stand you a kebab?” Croft said. “They’re always good here.”
What the heck? Kip thought. I was about to buy one anyway. He found it difficult to explain to himself why he had obeyed Croft’s summons, only that he was hungry, and that he wanted to see what would happen. Also, he resented the idea that Croft could make him afraid, that he might start avoiding places just because Croft happened to be there. He stood at the man’s side at the counter, leaning against the angled glass and staring up at the television mounted on the wall behind. The reception was bad, and the sizzling of meat on the grill made the soundtrack all but inaudible. Kip gazed without much interest at the striking tube workers, the visiting president he had seen already on the early news.
When the picture of the monster appeared it seemed to come out of the blue, although if he had thought about it more carefully he would have realized it was coming. It had been on the early news also, only he had forgotten. If he had remembered he could have done something, turned away from the screen at the crucial moment. He could have watched the traffic outside until the news had finished. It would have been easy.
Now that Croft was there to compare it with, he realized the photo fit was not all that good. The glasses were the wrong shape, and they made the monster’s face look squarer than it actually was. Also the real Croft’s cheekbones were more pronounced, the eyebrows thinner and less unkempt-looking. He saw that Croft too was staring at the picture. He experienced a sinking feeling, the kind of sick resignation he remembered from all the times he had been handed the results of an exam he already knew he had failed, the dismal knowledge of having been found out. The silence between them seemed to deepen and increase, spreading through the air like some poisonous gas. After what seemed like a long time Croft turned to him, smiling the ratty little half-smile Kip remembered from when he had asked him about the Nikon.
“Weird likeness, isn’t it?” he said. “I keep expecting them to come and arrest me.”
The fry cook was wrapping their kebabs in greaseproof paper, folding it quickly and expertly, the finished parcels like tiny papooses. Croft tore the paper aside almost immediately and bit straight into the middle of his kebab. Kip watched, amazed, wondering how he was able to do that without burning himself. Croft nodded briskly as if in approval and started towards the door. His mouth was smeared with grease, the thin lips glistening. The shop was full now, there were half a dozen people in the queue behind them. The darkness of the street outside seemed deeper and more complete, though Kip knew it was most likely just the contrast with the bright lights inside the kebab shop.
“Your food okay?” Croft said.
Kip nodded. They were walking side by side in the direction of the clock tower. The seconds were passing quickly, and Kip knew he had to say something, that to say nothing would be dangerous, almost as revealing as coming right out and accusing Croft of being the killer. He took a small bite of his kebab. The meat was charred on the outside, pink and tender within. It tasted as delicious as it smelled.
“They all look the same, though, these photo fits, don’t they? They could be anyone.”
“I know you’ve been following me,” Croft said suddenly. The tone of his voice had changed. There was something mean in it, a glistening menace that made Kip think of tensile steeclass="underline" tripwires, garrottes. He turned to face Kip, forcing him back against one of the shop fronts. “You were taking pictures of me in the park the other day.” He spoke in a harsh whisper, leaning in close, and Kip could smell the garlic on his breath. He stared at Kip fixedly, as if he would have liked to grab hold of him, strike him maybe, as if the effort of not doing so was placing him under a strain. Kip supposed he did not want to draw attention to himself, although no one passing by on the pavement was taking any notice of them and Kip realized they probably thought the monster was his father.
“I take photographs of people all the time. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His words came out in a rush, slipping over each other like coins spilling from a beggar’s torn pocket. Kip replayed them in his mind more slowly, looking for loopholes. So far as he could tell there weren’t any. He decided that so long as he stuck to his story he would be safe.
“Those pictures don’t look like you anyway,” he added. “It’s the glasses, that’s all.” He looked Croft straight in the eye and thought about his father – the way he would come in from seeing Grace Hemingway and ask what was for supper, and his mother would tell him goulash and Kip would play along with her because he knew his world would explode into pieces if he didn’t.
The point was to stick to your story. The murderers in the cop films all knew that and so did his father. It was more a matter of nerve than a matter of fact.
Croft took a step backwards, his face relaxing. Kip laughed to signal that everything was all right between them, and after a couple of seconds Croft laughed too. Kip took more bites from his kebab, still seeing in his mind’s eye Croft as he had been moments earlier: the hard line of his mouth, the hollow cheeks, pale in the lamplight, the agitated posture, like that of a beast of prey about to spring.
He had seemed for those few minutes to become something else. At first it was rats Kip thought of, the way a cornered rat could kill a dog if it was desperate enough, or so he had heard. But then he found himself thinking of his Polish grandmother Dasha, and a story she used to tell him when he was younger that she called The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. The story was about a monster that could change its shape at will to blend in with its surroundings. There was a special word she had for it too: wilkolek, or maybe wilkolak, the Polish word for werewolf. He had forgotten all about it until now.
It came to him that murderers, perhaps child murderers especially, were the ultimate shape-shifters. You could bump against one in the crowd, on the station platform, in a supermarket, and never suspect for a moment that what you were seeing was not an ordinary person but a wilkolak. It was only at certain moments that they revealed themselves for what they were. On a darkened street outside a kebab shop, for example. In the nylon-curtained back bedroom of a caravan on the Isle of Sheppey.
He did not believe in werewolves of course, not any more. But he knew the creature he had glimpsed in Croft’s eyes was capable of anything.
It was important not to let Croft see that he knew that. It was his certainty over this – a cold feeling, but steady and clear, like the knowledge of his father’s affair with Grace Hemingway – that kept him from panic, from simply dropping his kebab on the pavement and running away. He asked himself what he would do, what he would say to Croft now if Croft were not a monster but a human being.