With grim determination Danny dropped his open case onto the bed, setting bedsprings rattling. He crossed to the wardrobe. Its white doors opened with a wooden clank. Its fresh pine smell again filled his nostrils. And he collected his clothes.
As he removed hangers from the wardrobe, their hooks scraped the metal rail. It sounded like the sharpening of knives.
He didn’t remove the clothes from the hangers, figuring hangers might be in short supply where he was going. Two half-eaten T-shirts and a pair of jeans – not much to show for such an eventful stay. He put them in the suitcase then sat beside it on the bed.
Now he’d go to the police and hand himself in. It was what he deserved for killing Teena Rama, and she deserved that he did it for her. If they refused to arrest him, he’d insist. And if they still refused, he’d run round the back of their counter and knock their hats off, again and again and again, no matter how many times they put them back on. Until, finally, they’d have no choice but to bundle him into a cell, and lock him there forever.
And it might be a pathetic crime, lacking malice, style and gravity but pathetic was what he did best.
With a sigh, he fastened his luggage.
Halfway down the stairs, a breaking handle sent his luggage cartwheeling to the bottom.
Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump.
Thud, it landed on its flank, dead.
At the stair bottom, remembering the sheer uselessness of their previous conversation, Danny decided against saying goodbye to Doors. Instead, he toe-poked the case, like a badly designed football, to the end of the hallway.
Stepping over the bag, and the junkmail mountain, he opened the front door.
Through bare branches, mid-afternoon sun shone on Moldern Crescent. Birds sang like it was the first day of the rest of someone else’s life.
He took a final look at the silent hallway; the photos of Teena collecting prizes; little bits of incomprehensible sculpture; countless doors, countless intrigues; a secret corridor that was a broom closet, a broom closet that was a secret corridor (as though anyone would fall for that trick); and numerous monster-shaped holes.
The ruined cuckoo clock still hung on the wall. Deciding no one would miss it, he took it down, as a keepsake of the most remarkable girl who ever lived.
And he turned to leave.
– Mumble –
? He stopped, and listened hard.
? There it was again.
– Mumble mutter mumble!
– Someone was in Kitchen Number 1.