down’ and ten is ‘can’t open the window in case the air eats me’ scared?”
“If you feel obliged to use these assessments - then yes.”
“Pretty much up there.”
“Why?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because,” she said carefully, as in the flat lights began to be turned on and orders barked in brisk military voices, “being, as you are, an arrogant spawn of the nether reaches of creation, for something to have frightened a creature so relentlessly self-certain as you, it must be significant. It is in my interest to know about it.”
I smiled sideways at her. We respect honesty, even if we can’t stand its owner. “You’ve never heard of the death of cities.”
“As a concept?”
“As a man.”
“Then no. I never have.”
“It’s a myth.”
“Like the Midnight Mayor?”
“In that sort of region, yes. Just a rumour, a legend. You hear stories. Stuff like . . . when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there was a house right in the middle of the blast, at its very heart, untouched while the rest of the city was levelled. They say that there was a man in the house, who had his face turned towards the sky as the bomb fell and who just smiled, smiled and smiled and didn’t even close his eyes. But then again, you’ve got to ask yourself . . .”
“. . . who survived that close to the bomb to tell?”
“Right. It’s always the problem with these sorts of stories. Or they say that when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, there was a man who walked through the flooded streets and laughed and the water could not buffet him, or when they firebombed Dresden there was a guy untouched by the flames, or when the child tripped running into Bethnal Green station during the Blitz, that there was someone who knocked her down and climbed over the bodies piled up in the stairway. Myths. That’s all. Rumours and myths. And just in case these things aren’t scary enough on their lonesome, they just had to go and give this smiling, laughing, burning man a name, and call him the death of cities. Naturally, I don’t believe a word of it. And yes, of course I’m scared. Just in case.”
She looked, for a moment, like she was going to say something else. Then Kemsley was there, and his face did not glow with happiness.
“There’s nothing in the flat.”
I shrugged. “Makes a kind of sense.”
“If you thought . . .”
“I thought. I thought that Boom Boom probably wasn’t going to lie to me, what with me having my hand in his chest cavity at the time. Then I thought Nair came here; Nair was killed. It makes sense that whoever - whatever - killed him would only do so if Nair was getting close to something important. It makes even more sense to have moved that something to somewhere less likely to be found. Sorry. I just can’t pretend I’m surprised.”
“Then why are we here?” he growled.
“Think how stupid you’d feel if we’d known about this place and just ignored it,” I said, beaming as sweetly as we could in the face of his dentistry. “Let’s have a gander, yes?”
Kemsley was right.
The place was empty.
Surgically empty. You could have removed cataracts in the kitchen; you could have skated across the bathroom floor. It smelt of bleach, a stomach-clenching, eye-watering smell. No furniture, no curtains, no pictures, no nothing to indicate any sort of life. Even the carpets had been bleached a faded grey-white, even the pipes. An estate agent would have called it “full of promise”, and that’s all it was, four rooms of great potential and not much else, being walked over by size-twelve assault boots.
Kemsley said, “Nothing. See? This hasn’t helped at all.”
“Mo was here,” I replied firmly.
“How’d you know that?”
“The Executive Officer didn’t lie to us.”
“Sure. Because no one would.”
“Because we had our fingers closed around his heart,” we replied. I felt cold, hearing us speak so flatly of these things. “Because when a place is cleaned this thoroughly, it’s because there is something to hide.”
“Great. Good job the hiders, I think it’s pretty well hid, don’t you?”
I looked around.
He was right. It made our chest ache to think of it. Kemsley was right. There was nothing here.
Then Oda said: “There’s a CCTV camera in the entrance hall. So much for mystical stuff.”
I could have kissed her.
“A CCTV camera,” I repeated firmly, trying to hide our sudden thrill. “And only one way in and out, yes?”