“Oh,” I said, seizing gratefully on the opportunity to forget about the rabbit. “Sure. Did you find the guys?”
“Jesus, man, give us a chance. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight.” He scanned the trolley table. “That’s a lot of Monster Munch you’ve got there.”
“I know. My mother . . .”
“Ah, the mammies,” Martin said indulgently. “Can’t beat ’em. Can I have a packet, can I? You’ve got enough there to feed an army.”
“Sure. Take your pick.”
He dug out a packet of roast-beef flavor and pulled it open. “Lovely. I’m only starving.” Through a mouthful: “We heard they were turning you loose, came in to give you a lift home. Bannon’s downstairs with the car.”
“But,” I said, after a befuddled second. “My mother’s coming to get me.”
“We’ll give her a bell, sure. Explain the change of plans. How long till you’re ready? Few minutes?”
“But,” I said again. I couldn’t figure out a polite way to say But why?
Martin picked up on it anyway. “We said before: we need you to have a look round your place, see what’s missing, if there’s anything that’s not yours that they left behind. Remember?”
“Oh,” I said. I remembered, all right, but I had assumed they meant like a day or two after I got home. “Now?”
“Oh, yeah. Now’s when you’ll notice anything out of place. And you’ll want to get the gaff back in order, and you can’t do that till you’ve done the look-round.” Back in order— It hadn’t even occurred to me to think about what shape my apartment might be in. Overturned furniture, carpet spiky with dried blood, flies buzzing— “Get it over with now, go back to normal. Easier all round.” He threw a few more Monster Munch into his mouth.
“Right,” I said. The thought of walking into that with Martin and Flashy Suit sharp-eyed at my shoulder was bad, but it was a lot better than having my mother there, all big compassionate eyes and arm-squeezes, plus I was pretty sure she was planning to spend the car ride trying yet again to convince me to move back home for a while. “Yeah, no problem.”
“Beautiful. Here”—picking up the holdall my mother had brought me and swinging it onto the bed—“you’ll want the books, and that vase there looks like it cost someone a few bob. The rest can go in the bin, am I right?”
* * *
Going back into my apartment was worse than I had expected. It wasn’t the horror-film extravaganza I had been picturing: in the living room the furniture was perfectly arranged, the carpets and the sofa had been cleaned (although I could still make out the shadows of bloodstains and spatters, across a shockingly wide area), every surface was immaculate and glossy, not a speck of dust anywhere; the drawers from my sideboard were neatly stacked in a corner, next to carefully aligned piles of the papers and cables and CDs that had been inside them; there was even a big vase of curly purple and white flowers on the table. Sun and leaf-shadows poured over it all.
It was the air that was wrong. Without realizing it, I had gone in there reaching for the faint, familiar smell of home—toast, coffee, my aftershave, the basil plant my mother had given me, the fresh-cotton scent of the candles Melissa sometimes lit. All that was gone, wiped away; in its place was the thick scent of the flowers and a throat-coating chemical underlay, and I was sure that at the back of my nose I caught the sweaty, milky odor of the guy who had rushed me. The place didn’t smell abandoned; it smelled intensely, feverishly occupied, by someone who wasn’t me and didn’t want me there. It was like stretching out a hand to your dog and seeing him back away, hackles rising.
“Take your time,” Martin said, at my elbow. “We know this is tough on you. Need to sit down?”
“No. Thanks. I’m fine.” I braced my left leg harder; if it buckled on me now, I was going to rip the bloody thing right off—
“Your mam must’ve done a cleanup,” Flashy Suit said. “We didn’t leave it in this good nick. Fingerprint dust everywhere.”
“They had gloves,” I said, mechanically. I had just realized that half the drawers were broken, shards of wood sticking out, sides hanging loose.
“Sure,” Martin said, “but we didn’t know that then. And anyway, they could’ve taken them off at some stage, while you