in.’
‘Where’s Longbright?’
‘Janice should still be in number 43, with the Wiltons. I can’t see Meera or Colin. I told them to stay within sight.’ May reached over to the back seat for a baseball cap.
‘Must you wear that awful thing?’ Bryant complained. ‘It’s intended for someone a quarter of your age.’
‘I don’t know why you have this High Tory attitude to fashion.’ May straightened the peak in his mirror. ‘You’re not exactly Calvin Klein.’
‘I’ve had my trilby since the War.’
‘I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen over your ears, considering the way you’re shrinking. Where is it, anyway?’
‘I think I left it at Peregrine’s, along with my stick and my gloves.’
‘I’m going to tie them to your jacket one day. Keep your mobile handy in case anything’s wrong. You do have that, don’t you?’
‘Naturally.’ Bryant dug into his coat and was amazed to find his own Nokia there; he had begun to suspect it had fallen under the exposed floorboards at the unit.
‘Is it on? Of course not.’ May turned it on and threw it back. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He climbed out into the downpour.
Kallie found a torch and some candles under the sink. Illuminated by pale spheres of radiance, the house appeared to be returning to its Victorian origins. There was something graceful about being able to carry the light from one room to another, bringing each space into focus as she passed through.
The twilit garden was now brighter than the interior of the house. The glow of the city was reflected on low racing clouds. As she stood framed by the window, she saw that Tate was standing inside the bush once more. She recognized his crippled shape immediately. Shining the torch through the window, she picked up his startled eyes in the light, and panned the beam over his body.
He was holding a carving knife in his right hand.
She flicked off the torch and made her way to the back door, checking that it was bolted top and bottom. The opaque-glass panel above the handle was wide enough for an intruder to smash and put his hand through. She dragged a chair from the kitchen and wedged it against the handle, then ran back to the window, staying low. Tate had moved closer, and was brazenly loping up the garden toward the house. A squall of rain hit the window with the force of a thrown shingle. She had forgotten to set her cordless phone back on its stand, and began searching the kitchen for it.
When she looked back into the wavering darkness, Tate had vanished once more.
45
* * *
ALL THE HOUSES
Kallie had no intention of running away.
Let the men in the street do that; it was the women who stayed and fought. This was her home, somewhere she finally belonged, and she would stay to protect it. The more logical you were, the less there was to be afraid of. She took stock of her surroundings.
It appeared that only the lights were out. The phone was still working. Forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply, she listened for sounds beyond the river under the bathroom and the falling rain. This time, pride kept her from going for help. Tate was distracted and crippled. She was more than a match for him. She could not pretend to understand what might drive a man to act this way, but so many residents of the metropolis had become lost inside themselves that it was no longer a disease afflicting isolated communities; lunacy had spread to the city.
She kept a check from the windows; no sign of him—what kind of mad game was he playing?
Water was seeping in under the back door. Kallie rolled up a bath towel and laid it across the step. Something made her turn in her flight back through the basement hall to the bottom of the stairs; she caught the chiaroscuro of her reflection in the bathroom mirror, illuminated by a single tall candle. How different I look, she thought. A grown woman I barely know. The candle flickered, and in that instant she saw something else. A young man with bare white shoulders peering back at her through the brickwork.
John May walked back along the darkened street, trying to avoid the sputtering channels from inundated drainpipes. He counted down the houses as he passed them: number 37, the Ethiopians hardly anyone saw; number 39, where the Ayson family was riven by suspicions of infidelity; number 41, where Jake Avery had been suffocated in his