It was a surprise to Vince to think that there even were birds where he was living. He wondered if they had to sing louder to hear each other above the racket of the amusement arcade. He wondered, too, if he would ever sleep properly again. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her. The girl.
Five minutes inside was all it had taken yesterday. There was an entrance foyer in which there was still evidence of Silver Birches’ former life as some kind of nursing facility – fire doors and exit signs and a couple of old Health and Safety notices about keeping doors locked and getting visitors to sign in. On the walls there lingered a limp piece of paper with a typewritten request for more volunteers to help with an outing to Peasholm Park, alongside a small, time-weathered poster announcing a summer fête, decorated with (badly) hand-drawn pictures of balloons, a tombola, a cake. The thought of confused, senile old people being jollied along like children with balloons and cake made Vince feel even more depressed than he already was. If that were possible. Better to go over a cliff than to live out the scrag-end of your life in a place like this.
He pushed his way through one of the wired-glass fire doors on the ground floor and found himself in a corridor. The corridor was lined with doors, all of which were closed except for one that stood wide open like an invitation. Inside the small room were two old hospital bed frames on which lay bare filthy mattresses.
There was only one occupant of the room – a girl. A girl who lay crumpled and lifeless on the floor beneath one of the barred windows. There was a thin scarf round her neck, knotted tightly. The ends of the scarf had been cut just above the knot and the remainder of the scarf was still tied to one of the window bars. Her face was swollen and purple. It was a pretty self-explanatory scene.
She was a speck of a thing, Thai or Chinese or something. She was wearing a cheap silver sequinned dress revealing legs covered with bruises and was quite obviously dead, but Vince crouched down and checked her pulse anyway. When he stood up he felt so dizzy he thought he might faint and he had to hold on to the door jamb for a few seconds to steady himself.
He left the room, backing out and closing the door quietly. It was the nearest he could get to a gesture of respect for the dead. In a daze, he tried the other doors in the corridor but they were all locked. He wasn’t sure – because his brain seemed suddenly untrustworthy – but he thought he could hear noises from behind the doors: a soft moan, a little sob, small scuffling, snuffling sounds as if mice were in the rooms. It was the kind of place that Vince thought of as existing in other countries, not this one. The kind of place you read about in the newspaper, not the kind of place that someone you had known most of your life had ‘business’ in.
He could hear a man’s voice coming from somewhere at the back of the building and he followed the thread of sound like a sleepwalker. It led him to the large back door. It was a double door, accessorized with all kind of bolts and locks, but its wings were standing wide open to reveal the concreted back yard beyond. Tommy was framed in the diptych of light. Vince’s heart sank. Tommy. He was talking to his dog, the big Rottweiler, Brutus, that put the wind up Vince. He was being loaded by Tommy into his Nissan Navara. Sitting in the passenger seat was the Russian bloke who worked in Tommy’s yard. Vadim? Vasily? More of a brute than Brutus. The dog looked eager, as if it were about to set out on a hunt.
Vince stepped into the yard. The bright sun dazzled after the chill of the darkness inside. He had forgotten what summer was. He had forgotten what daylight was. He had forgotten everything except for the girl’s discoloured, swollen face. Tommy caught sight of him and said, ‘Vince?’ He was staring at him as if he’d just met him and was trying to assess him as friend or enemy.
Vince’s mouth was so dry that he didn’t think he could speak, but he managed to bleat, ‘There’s