next to the body of an old woman whose throat had been cut; his fingerprints were on her throat. He was in trouble. And he knew what it was necessary for him to do. Where the road for Truro turns off from the dual carriageway there is a roundabout. Harvey went round it twice. As he whirled, a hundred uncertainties flashed before him from which appeared two clear paths, two exits from his spinning motion: he could take the Truro road, drive straight to the police station, tell all and it would be over. Or he could drive back the way he had come and try to fix things, to make it all right. Twice he went round and then he took the St Ives road.
He was tired now and his back and knees were singing. He had been cleaning for some time. A bucket, rubber gloves, a duster and a bottle of Zest he had found under the sink in the kitchen, and with these tools he had begun methodically to remove all traces of himself from the house. The trail he had followed previously he now went over again, wiping himself away. It struck him that in some ways this was what he'd been trying to do ever since he left St Ives twenty years ago: eradicate his traces from the place, and its from him. He was topless, having used his T-shirt to wrap around his hands as he entered the house and this was now tied round his neck, giving him the air of a portly Romany. The measured calm of the seasoned house-breaker that he had affected earlier was long gone and every whisper had become a hunting, every sigh a haunting. By the time he made his furtive way down into the cellar he felt like a sweaty Orestes.
He had left the basement till last because he knew his nerve would not hold for long. Now as he stood and faced the worst, his breath came heavy through bared teeth, his mouth open in a strange grimace that he knew would stay when this was over: an expression he had never made before had entered his range. When would he use it again? The taste of beer that wasn't quite right? Josh's morning aroma? A racist joke? To what use would he put this new look that he found on his face? He closed his eyes for a moment then grabbed his sponge cleaner from the bucket and, bending, eradicated his own footprints in the blood. Then he started on the rather neat round pool of sick, which seemed to be keeping itself to itself like a little snobbish pizza. Mixing water with the blood softened it and it ran about his feet in a swirling pattern, creating pretty ice-cream sundaes on the floor. Pizza and ice-cream: his favourite. But the blood running around was bad. It was soaking his trainers. He needed to stand on something so he could clean one set of footprints without creating another. He looked around . . . What could he use? With the makings of a ghoulish grin, he glanced at the cardboard box: he could use the Superman One, of course he could. Perfect. He could use this priceless treasure of which he had dreamed for so long to soak up the blood. The Superman One would save him from disaster. Cackling, he stepped across to the cardboard box but then stood nonplussed. The Superman One was gone.
Harvey struggled with this for a moment. He looked behind the cardboard box. Then he looked in the box at the other stuff that was inside: curtains with pictures of trains on them, a long length of matchbox car track, shoes (there were more shoes in this house than Harvey had ever seen before), various boxes of old plastic toys, an orange counterpane . . . Because he couldn't take anything out of the box without covering it in blood, Harvey leaned right over and almost disappeared into the box as he hunted. But it wasn't there. However much he scrabbled in the illogic of the situation, he could find no trace of it. Rising, he stood in thought for a moment. If it wasn't here and he had definitely dropped it here, then . . . then what? Mechanically he continued to clean: at the last moment remembering to run his duster over Mrs Odd's neck. 'It means, of course, that someone has taken it.' Harvey spoke out