The man put the keys on the floor.
'Sometimes I come into your house when you're not here. I go through your things. I read your letters. I sleep in your attic. I follow you to and from work.'
Not a mistake, then. Kevin stared at the man and thought back desperately, trying to remember seeing anything, anyone suspicious. There was nothing. You simply walked along, didn't you? Never paid much attention to the people around and about. A clever person could follow you easily.
'You've never seen me,' the man said. 'I'm very careful. But I've seen you. I've been watching you all day. Both of you.'
Kevin nodded carefully. Sweat ran down his forehead into his eye, and he blinked it away. The water lapped at the sides of the bath.
The man in the devil mask reached down to the floor and picked something else up. A red and yellow tin.
Lighter fluid.
Kevin's stomach went cold and dead and hard. He tried to recoil but couldn't move. Instead, he was aware that he had wet himself.
The stranger clasped his hands together, holding the tin between them. It was the kind you might squirt onto an outdoor barbecue to make the flames roar. The man was pointing it vaguely in Kevin's direction. He inclined his head and - despite the mask - somehow he looked thoughtful.
'We're going to play a game about love,' he said.
3 DECEMBER
EIGHT MINUTES AFTER DAWN
7.23 A.M.
It was enough.
Simpson's body was still twitching in the water, but he had ceased any kind of struggle. Through the smoke in the room, the devil could see that most of Simpson's hair was gone and that the skin on his sightless face had scorched and burst. He didn't appear able to breathe any more. If he wasn't dead yet, he would be soon. These things were always a matter of degree.
The devil turned off the digital recorder and checked the display.
Eight minutes and fifteen seconds of audio. It would need only a fraction of that.
The bathroom stank, and the devil was glad to move back out onto the landing and shut the door on the mess within. Overhead, the wires hung down from the smoke-detector it had broken before ending the game, so that the air would remain unalarmed by Simpson's passing.
There were a few more things to do before the devil could leave. On the few occasions it had left Simpson alone, it had removed all traces of its surveillance equipment from the house. That didn't really matter at this stage, of course, but the activity had helped to keep it occupied while it waited for Simpson to regain consciousness. It had also checked his computer for emails. It wondered what the girl who had been here yesterday was doing right now.
Sleeping, probably, oblivious of what she had done.
That wouldn't last.
There were still a couple of items to collect. It headed downstairs, putting the digital recorder in the pocket of the overalls as it went.
It would need the recording when it came time to make the phone call.
3 DECEMBER
22 HOURS, 40 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
8.40 A.M.
Mark
Given how much I missed her, I guess it was strange I hardly ever dreamed about Lise. There had probably been only a handful of occasions in going on six months, and even then I didn't dream
about
her exactly. She was always conspicuous by her absence. Just as she was when I was awake.
The dream that morning was no different. I was sitting on the beach in my shorts, staring out towards the horizon. My skin was wet and peppered with sand, and I was shivering. The sea in front was calm and serene, the waves rolling slowly in, the water gently unravelling. Curls thinned out, stretching up the shore, before retreating with a quiet hiss. Above me, the sky was blue and blurry, whitening until it met the flat sea in the distance. A strange grammar of birds formed italic sentences against it.
That was all.
Harmless on the surface, but as I woke up it left me feeling crushed; there was a physical sensation of despair pressing down on me. For a moment, I didn't recognise the almost empty room around me. What ... ? Then I remembered the move across country. The flat, the job. I began to rub the sleep from my face, and my hand came away sweaty.
Christ, Lise,
I thought.
You pick your days to visit.
And then I paused, because something was wrong. It only took a second to place it. There was music playing in my new bedroom. That was wrong because I had dim memories of different music playing earlier on, before I'd drifted back into the dream. I rolled my head sideways and glanced at the radio alarm.
'Shit,' I said. It wasn't quite enough. 'And fuck.'
I should have been fresh out of the shower and powering up the coffee machine over an hour ago. I closed my eyes.
You really pick your days to visit.
A lesser man might have jumped up immediately, expanding on the whole 'shit and fuck' subject matter at a louder volume, but some things are more important than being late. And so, instead, I lay there for a few more seconds, breathing deeply and clinging to the dream as it faded from me. The heavy feeling of despair remained, and it wasn't great, but sometimes despair is better than nothing. Sometimes it's the right thing to feel.
You pick your days to visit
, I thought.
But you're always welcome.
And then, finally, I scrambled out of bed and into the corridor, trying to remember where on earth the bathroom was in my new flat.
At nine thirty, exactly half an hour late for my first day, I drove into a car-park of crackling gravel and chain-link fences.
Weather-wise, it was a miserable, shitty morning - and therefore an appropriate backdrop for my current frustration. The sky was filled with dirty smears of cloud, like snow after a day of slushy footprints, and it couldn't decide whether to rain properly or not, so it just occasionally darkened and spat. The grass verges dotted around the car-park were churned to mud. On the way over here I'd listened to the local radio, and the weather forecaster had cheerily explained there was good news and bad news. The rain would stop by late morning. But he promised snow for later.
At the far end of the lot, the police reception building sat squat and low. There was a network of buildings behind it, connected by beige concrete walkways, and what little glass there was reflected the dark sky and gave away nothing. A month ago, when I came for my interview, I'd thought that the department looked more of a place to commit a crime than report one. It was like an abandoned mental hospital.
I killed the car's engine, and the rain created a more intimate patter on the roof. It settled on the windscreen, gradually blurring the view.
Late on my first day. I couldn't have been any more unprofessional if I'd turned up in a fucking clown suit. My right index finger tapped absently on my left elbow for a moment, but there was nothing I could do, and so instead of dwelling, I gathered myself together, then got out and made my way across the tarmac towards the entrance.
The reception area was typical of its kind: black ceiling above, fuzzy carpet below, and pale breeze-block walls keeping order in between. There were pamphlets tacked to noticeboards -
Protect your bicycle! -
and a row of orange plastic seats in a small waiting area where nobody was waiting. From outside it looked like a mental hospital; from within, a leisure centre.
The reception desk was opposite the door. There were two reasonably attractive girls sitting behind it, and the one on the left smiled at me as I approached, so I smiled back. She had light brown hair tied back in a neat ponytail, and sparse makeup that she'd applied well. The other girl was busy on her headset, taking calls.
'Hi, there. I'm Detective Mark Nelson. I'm the new member of John Mercer's team.'
'Ah yes.'
She reached to one side and came back with a clipboard.
'Mercer's new lackey. We've been expecting you.'
'Traffic was bad,' I lied.
'I wouldn't worry.' She passed me the clipboard. 'You need to sign some things for me.'
My name was printed at various points on the sheet, and I worked my way down, putting my signature next to each. The girl studied me the whole time.
'This is your first assignment, isn't it?' she said.
I smiled without looking up. 'Word travels fast.'
'Are you surprised?'
'Not really, no.'
I genuinely wasn't, because there was bound to have been speculation about anyone John Mercer appointed to his team, never mind me. Partly it was down to his status, which was as close to celebrity as a working cop generally got. Apart from being a well-known, well-respected police officer inside his regular working hours here, he was also sought after for lectures and talks, consultancies, articles, papers, even occasional television appearances.
More notoriously, he'd written a book about his experiences catching killers - but hadn't had the decency to retire first. Instead, he'd written about the overwork and stress that had led to a breakdown two years before. It was a brutally honest piece of writing, but it certainly hadn't won him any friends. And in the harsh world of police work, many said his breakdown hadn't done so, either. But Mercer wasn't one to care much for the opinions of others. Since returning to work a little under a year ago, he'd appointed a number of more, shall we say, seasoned officers - all of whom had failed to live up to his infamous standards.
When you considered all that, it was probably inevitable that anybody who got the job would be eyed with an odd mixture of extreme resentment and abject pity.
With me, I knew there'd be added interest. Both those emotions would be blown up a hundred times over. In terms of traditional experience, Mercer was taking a chance at entirely the other end of the spectrum with me: this was indeed my first assignment. All of which meant that, yes, I wasn't surprised the girl on reception had heard of me. In fact, she very probably knew more about me right now than I did.
'Your first post,' she said, shaking her head in mock sympathy, 'and you got Mercer. Some people are just born unlucky.'
'Ah, but this is what I wanted.'
'Well, give it a week.' She smiled, but I couldn't tell if she was joking. 'Anyway, look up there and say hello to the camera.'
There was a black ball hanging from the ceiling. I faced up, noting the red light on the side.
Flash.
Say hello to the camera.
That photograph shows me for what I was at the time: a man in his late twenties, of above-average height and with an athletic build reduced to slim by a new suit he isn't used to wearing. Brown hair, cut short and neat. Average looks, if we're honest. Not a great photograph, either, but cameras and I have never really got on. They generally seem to catch me halfway between two different expressions. In that picture, I look pretty confident and full of resolve, and yet you can tell there's a bit of nerves there. In person, one on one, I could hide it better. But that camera caught me out.
The file the photograph is attached to gives potted details of my history. My name, Mark Nelson. My age, twenty-eight. At that point, I had officially, if unsuccessfully, been a detective for half an hour.
My background. I was an interview man by trade - my area of expertise was talking to suspects, victims, witnesses, handling door-to-doors. Putting people at ease and picking apart the seams of their secrets. I completed a PhD in psychology before I joined the police, part of which had involved interviewing a handful of serial offenders. That had sparked an interest, and I guess I'd always thought I'd end up working in behavioural psychology. Like in the films. Only it didn't happen that way. Instead, undramatic as it might be, I discovered I had more of an aptitude for interviews - not something I'd imagined specialising in, but life throws you these curveballs and sometimes you catch them.
The file would tell you that I'd graduated from the academy five years ago and spent the intervening years as part of the grunt pool, pulled into service here and there by the detective teams who handle the cases. It's not great fun but it's what you do, and while that was going on I was also attending every relevant training course that came along, collecting whatever experience and minor positions of authority I could. Punching my clock, basically, but always with an eye on promotion. Eventually, anyway.
It was two months since I'd found out Mercer had a gap for a door-to-door man, and when I read the ad I'd thought, why not? What was there to lose? I could go for the interview, let my record speak for itself, argue my case as best I could in person. Aim for the stars, as they say, and settle for less.
Weird as it sounds, I didn't expect to get the job. And so when I received the appointment letter - a month ago - I'd literally jumped around our old flat like a kid. The application and interview had never quite left my mind, but even so, I'd been telling myself that there was no chance - and, obviously, that I didn't care anyway. But at that moment, equally obviously, I'd realised how much I did.
That evening, I'd sat down and reread Mercer's book from cover to cover, and the excitement had become slowly tainted by nerves and self-doubt. Mercer was a legend, after all; how was I going to measure up? More to the point, what if I didn't? In response, I'd remembered what Lise had always said about having more confidence in myself, about not worrying so much about life and simply going for it instead. I'd looked around that rattly apartment, the one in which, as in my occasional dreams, she was so conspicuous by her absence, and I'd managed to grow some determination from the seeds of our old conversations.
But still, given Mercer's reputation, it was only natural that a little of that fear had remained. When I look at that photograph now, I see a hint of it emerging from below the confidence and I can tell I was nervous about what my first day would bring.
And back then, I really had no idea.