Lil’s ‘good feeling’ took a knock early that afternoon when they arrived at Wilderness Lane. The street was lined with derelict buildings that had once been respectable. The decorative plasterwork was crumbling, the glass orbs of the cast-iron lamp-posts were algae-stained, and the pavement was cracked beyond repair. Sirens wailed in the background and the low solitary song of a saxophone spiralled up from one of the dark basement clubs. It wasn’t exactly the business district Lil had imagined. The only business she could see, apart from a betting shop and a pawnbroker’s was a fold-away table manned by two boys trying to sell things out of a suitcase.
Lil found number 154 and paused as she reached for the buzzer for C. She took a deep breath and focused on the silhouette of McNair in her mind’s eye as she got her act together. Play it cool, gather evidence, establish the facts. ‘OK,’ she said in a low voice, instinctively glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was in earshot. ‘Mandrel won’t be able to see you, Nedly, so I’ll do all the talking, OK? And I’ll have to pretend you’re not there either or else he’ll think I’m crazy.’
Nedly looked hurt.
‘But it’s important that you are there, OK? I might need backup.’
Lil hit the buzzer, and said ‘Hello’ into the intercom. There was no reply.
Nedly looked nervously up the street. ‘Maybe he’s out?’
‘Maybe,’ said Lil. She pushed at each of the buzzers in turn.
‘Let’s just go,’ muttered Nedly. He was hopping nervously from foot to foot.
Lil pursed her lips. ‘The fact is, we’re looking for a very dangerous criminal, Nedly. A child-killer, so we could do with some help – someone who knows how to bust a few heads. Someone like Mandrel.’ She buzzed again, holding all the buttons down with the palm of her hand for several seconds.
Finally a throaty voice that sounded like it had just been woken from a late-afternoon stupor yelled: ‘What?’
‘Pizza delivery,’ said Lil cheerfully. ‘One large pizza, extra garlic bread, special promotion.’
With a click the door opened.
The building smelt of damp. There were orange-coloured water marks spreading across the ceiling, which bulged in places. The vinyl wallpaper in the hallway looked like it was sweating and the brown felt carpet had worn to nothing on the stairs. Nedly peered at the naked bulb that swung overhead. A dewdrop of water hung from it and then fell through him onto a darkened rug that was covering up some rotten-looking floorboards.
‘This place is a death trap,’ he muttered, following Lil up the staircase.
On the third-floor landing was a door with a frosted-glass pane. The window read ‘Absolom Mandrel Private Investigator’ in flaking gold lettering.
Lil knocked on the glass and waited impatiently. There was no answer. She put an eye to the key hole and looked in. The shutters were down and she could only make out a bit of the floor in the dim rectangle of light that shone in through the door, but she could see that it was strewn with scraps of cardboard and scrunched-up pieces of paper and looked like it could do with a really good sweep.
She called out ‘Mr Mandrel? Are you in? Hello? We have some information you might be interested in, regarding the disappearance of Nedly – Ned Stubbs.
‘I told you he’s not there,’ said Nedly, anxiously checking the stairwell.
Lil pondered. ‘Maybe we should wait inside?’
‘It’s locked.’
‘We’ve come this far.’ She appraised the door lock. ‘I saw this once, in a film,’ she said and took out her penknife. Sticking the blade between the door and the frame she started wiggling it.
Nedly looked nervously over his shoulder. ‘You can’t just break in to someone’s office! What if he comes back?
‘He’ll never know we were here. I’ll just take a quick poke around and then we’ll come back another time.’
Lil levered the knife back and forth and up and down, not exactly sure what she was doing. ‘Almost got it,’ she said hopefully. ‘Just a couple more turns.’ With a creak and a snap, the wood on the door frame splintered and the door popped open.
‘Open sesame!’ she said with a flourish
‘You’ve broken his door,’ Nedly said accusingly. ‘I think he will notice.’
Lil flung the door wide and a huddle of empty whisky bottles toppled over with a clatter, like pins at a bowling alley. She switched the light on and her heart lurched. ‘Maybe not.’
The room was bare except for a large wooden desk covered in sticky rings where drinks had been spilt, an old, dented filing cabinet, and a coat stand that had been knocked over and left to lie there.
Nedly peered over the banister of the stairwell to check if anyone had been disturbed by the noise. He turned back to give Lil the all-clear but she was already in the office rifling through the filing cabinet.
‘It’s just empty folders,’ she said, disappointed. She picked up the phone receiver. The line was dead. ‘Mandrel is long gone.’
White spots dotted the yellowing walls where pictures had once been stuck and then ripped down again. The only things left up were a framed certificate that stated that A. Mandrel had passed his detective exams with distinction, and a graduation portrait of the young police recruit looking hopeful. It hung lopsided and the glass was cracked.
Lil stared at it long and hard. She saw her own reflection in the glass, and tried to mirror the set of his steely jaw.
‘What are you looking at?’ Nedly peered over her shoulder, close enough to make her shiver, and then a sound distracted them: the heavy creak of someone moving softly up the stairs.
Nedly darted out onto the landing and saw the shadow of a man rounding the stairwell, keeping close to the wall. He saw it raise one hand.
‘Someone’s coming. Hide!’
Lil looked around; there was nowhere to hide. She quickly turned off the lights, closed the door and then flattened herself to the wall beside it.
The shadow loomed across the frosted glass, engulfing the lettering. The door swung open, nearly hitting Lil in the face.
As the man in the doorway reached inside for the light switch Lil panicked and slammed the door back shut, trapping his hand. The man cried out in surprise but he didn’t withdraw his hand. Lil slammed it again, more forcefully. The hand fell to the floor. This time it was Lil’s turn to cry out – the hand lay there at her feet, lifeless. Lil kicked it away from her and stood in front of the door trying to hold it closed while the man whose hand she had just severed tried to force it open.
‘Argh! Help!’ Lil squealed. ‘I’ve got his hand! He’s going to kill me.’
Nedly cast a cautious glance at the door and crept over to the hand. He peered at it.
The man outside had stopped rattling the door and fallen silent but they could still see his shadow. It looked like it was holding up a pair of pliers.
Lil gasped. She gave Nedly a look that said: We have to get out of here!
‘Lil,’ said Nedly. ‘I think that’s …’
From the hallway a gruff voice said ‘I’m going to open this door, nice and slow, and nobody moves, OK?’
Lil couldn’t have moved if she tried. Her eyes went to the shadow, to the hand, to Nedly, to the window. The door swung open and the man wielding the pliers stood there.
He had the same broad shoulders and cleft chin as the police officer in the photograph, but that was where the similarity ended. Absolom Mandrel was grizzled and overweight. His eyes were red-rimmed. He had several days’ stubble growing on his chin and some kind of greasy egg stain on his rumpled shirt. His mac looked like it had once belonged to a tramp, and the rim of his hat was frayed.
He bent down and picked up the hand and screwed it on over the pliers. Lil looked at him, mystified.
‘It’s a prosthetic,’ he said.
‘What’s that Swiss Army … thing?’ Lil whispered.
Mandrel pulled off the rubber hand again and opened and closed the crocodile mouth of the pliers. ‘The hand is just for looks – the Swiss Army thing, as you call it, is a multifunctional device I adapted myself to get things done. This one is my driving attachment.’ He mimicked steering the wheel and changing gear. ‘Now, do you mind telling me what you’re doing?’
‘I – I …’ Lil couldn’t find the words. Was this really the man in the photograph? ‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘So you thought you’d just break in and have a poke around, eh?’
Lil shook the question off; she had a more pressing one. ‘What happened to you?’
Mandrel looked down at his prosthetic hand. ‘I lost it trying to apprehend a criminal.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Lil explained slowly. She went over to the portrait and pointed an accusing finger at it. ‘I mean, what happened to you?’
Mandrel pulled a hipflask out of his pocket, took a swig and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Mind your own beeswax, Wing Nut.’
He frowned at the splintered door frame and then gave her a hard look, which softened suddenly. ‘Say, you look familiar; do I know you from somewhere?’
‘No,’ Lil replied quickly.
‘Show him the photo!’ urged Nedly.
‘No!’ Lil repeated.
‘All right, I heard you the first time.’ Mandrel narrowed his eyes at her. ‘There’s something about you, kid, reminds me of someone. Can’t put my finger on it.’ He shrugged and went over to the desk, opening all the drawers one by one, locating a half-empty bottle in the last one and stowing it away in his mac pocket. ‘So what is your business here?’
Lil looked over at Nedly, who was staring glumly at Mandrel, disappointment all over his face. She knew just how he felt. ‘Detective Mandrel, I have some information about one of your cases.’
Mandrel rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb. ‘I’m only working one case now and I sincerely doubt you know anything that could help me with that.’
‘It’s about Ned Stubbs. The Missing Boy.’
‘Who?’ He frowned at the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling as it buzzed and dimmed.
‘The caretaker at the Hawks Memorial Orphanage hired you to find him. Last year.’
Abe looked confused for a moment. He took off his hat, wiped back his grizzled hair, and then replaced it. ‘I remember. That case went cold.’